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v 0o x. 















ff? APPLETONS’ 

Town and Country Library 


LISHED SEMI-MONTHLY November 15, 1891 $ 10.00 PER ANNUM 

■ M ■ , 


WIDOWER INDEEt 


By RHODA BROUGHTON and 
ELIZABETH BISLAND 





ENTERED 


THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK AS SECOND-CLASS MAIL MATTER 


D. APPLETON & CO., NEW YORK 


* 


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TOWN AND 

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LIBRARY 


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A WIDOWER INDEED 



RHODA BROUGHTON 

AND 


ELIZABETH BISLAND 

/ 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1891 


Copyright, 1891, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 


All rights reserved. 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


CHAPTER I. 

Ho, it is nonsense. This can not be he. This 
is somebody else. This, he? this numb, mazed 
creature, taking off a hat so heavily craped that not 
a half -inch of the original silk is left visible ! Is it 
off his hands that he is drawing a pair of new ebon 
gloves? Ridiculous! Why, here in Oxford he 
scarcely ever wears gloves at all ; and what should 
he be doing with these inky horrors ? And yet it is 

he ! it is Edward Lygon, Bursar of College, 

who has just stepped out of the mourning coach that 
carried him to his wife’s funeral “ Anne is dead ! ” 
“Anne is dead ! ” “Anne is dead ! ” “Anne is dead ! ” 
He recalls now that he has said this short sentence 
over to himself an infinity of times during the last 
three days. Perhaps, if he goes on saying it, he will 
grow by and by to know what it means. So far it 
seems perfectly senseless. “ My wife is dead ! ” “I 


4 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


have lost my wife ! ” “ I have lost Anne ! ” He 

has reached his study ; and as he enters it, Eliza the 
housemaid passes him. She has been pulling up the 
blinds. How that the funeral is over, the blinds 
may be pulled up again. He hears her jerking 
them up in the dining-room. In the study they 
need never have been pulled down, since it looks to 
the back, to the privacy of Anne’s narrow garden ; 
but yet, now he comes to think of it, he has sat 
there in semi-darkness for the last three days ; ever 
since — since what ? “ Anne is dead ! ” He says it 

aloud this time ; and the words sounding in his own 
ear, seem to bring a flash of understanding with 
them, of understanding mixed with incredulous 
ridicule. Anne dead! vigorous, blooming Anne, 
who never knew a half-hour’s sickness during all 
her twenty-seven years ! and he left alive ; he, who 
as an infant 'was wrapped in cotton-w T ool to keep in 
the flickering flame of his hesitating life ; he, who 
at eighteen was given over by the doctors, and 
packed off to Madeira ; he, to whom never a winter 
comes but it lays him low with half a dozen bronch- 
itises. That perfect creature dead, and paltry he left 
alive ! There flashes across him a recollection of a 
phrase employed by an acquaintance of his the other 
day, apropos of the death of a genuinely beloved 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


5 


and heartily mourned wife, that it was “so vex- 
atious ! ” The absurd inadequacy of the expression 
had tickled him at the time ; and it comes back to 
him now. Yes, it is “vexatious” that Anne is 
dead. He sits down in his leathern arm-chair by 
what was once the fire, but, through the establish- 
ment’s eagerness, first, to see its mistress buried, and 
secondly to talk over the details of that ceremonial, 
has been suffered to languish out. It just crosses 
Edward’s mind that the hearth, unswept and ashy, 
is like that of a railway station waiting-room ; but it 
does not occur to him to have the flame rekindled 
nor to try himself to revive it. The room feels like 
a well, and the March wind sweeps in nippingly 
through the open window; it swept in nippingly 
across Anne’s deep grave, too. He wonders foggily 
to how many of the bare-headed Fellows of Colleges 
who stood around in that eager air will bring sick- 
ness and perhaps death. A good many of those 
heads were bald ones ; and one funeral is apt to 
make more. How concerned Anne would have 
been to see him fronting the icy blast that blew 
across St. Mary’s Cemetery, thinly clad, and with 
unprotected head ! With a curious confusion of 
ideas, he finds, himself framing answers with which 
to meet the expressions of her solicitude. Of 


6 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


whose solicitude? How many Annes are jostling 
themselves in his mazed memory ! The wife — 
Anne, tying silk handkerchiefs with tender admon- 
ishments about his throat ; the maid — Anne, helping 
him over all the stiles literal and metaphorical of his 
invalid youth ; the child — Anne, chubby and brave, 
tearfully fighting his battles with those big elder 
brothers of his, who, enraged at his being made a 
muff of by over-indulgent parents, led him an evil 
life during their enormous holidays; giving him 
the disagreeable rdle in every game ; galloping up 
behind his pony, and smacking it smartly to make it 
kick, etc., etc. Other men, when they lose their 
wives, can look back to a period when they had not 
them But in his life there has never been the 
time when he had not Anne. How is he to begin 
to disentangle her from among the threads of his 
existence ? As if an ironical answer to this question, 
there comes to his ears through the sudden shutting 
of a door upstairs, the sound of a little child’s cry- 
ing ; a crying half naughty, half woful. “ Nanny 
is in trouble again,” he says to himself ! “ I wonder 
what she has been doing now ; Anne always said 
that nurse was too hard upon her.” He rises, and 
going to the door, opens it and stands irresolutely 
listening. Not indeed that there is much need to 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


7 


listen for noises in 107, Holywell, Oxford ; since, 
such are the dimensions and the build of that artless 
houselet — that a loud whisper in the great garret is 
not entirely inaudible in the cellar. Shall he go 
and fetch her down to comfort her ? fetch her and 
Billy too? As he so stands uncertain, annoyedly 
listening to the continued, though deadened wail, 
the sound of a turning door-handle makes him look 
toward the garden entrance, through which a 
young woman is hastily stepping toward him. It 
is just the way in which Anne has been wont to fly 
to him, when he came back from his Bursary ; 
Anne, with her trowel in her hand, fresh and rosy 
from rooting among her wallflowers and squills. 
Of course it is not Anne, though for one mad sec- 
ond the identity in height and likeness in feature 
make him believe that she has shaken off the 
Eucharis lilies that coldly cover her, and come back 
to him. It is her sister Susan. This is not the first 
time by many that he has seen Susan standing at 
that garden door, nor has it by any means always 
been with pleasure that he has so seen her. It has 
struck him often, and with irritation, what a very 
great deal an affectionate girl thinks it necessary to 
see of her married sister; nor has Susan on her 
part always been successful in disguising how un- 


8 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


necessarily early she has considered his return from 
his Bursary. Either has been warmly jealous of the 
amount of her dear company bestowed upon the 
other by their all-beloved one ; for Anne has been 
one of those fortunate women, of whose society 
they who love her think that they can never have 
enough. 

“ I just came to see how you were getting on.” 

The two inky figures stand looking at each other 
for a moment with a sort of strangeness in their 
new conditions, and then he answers, “ Oh, I am all 
right, thanks.” 

They go into the study. 

“ How cold you are ! Shall not I shut your 
window ? — and your fire is oat ! ” 

“ So it is.” 

She kneels down before the hearth, and begins 
to rake the lower bar of the choked grate ; but it is 
too late. Hot a spark rewards her efforts. “ Eliza 
must bring some sticks,” she says, ringing the bell ; 
and so subsides backward on her heels before the 
fireplace. “ It is bitterly cold now the sun has gone 
down ; I am so glad he stayed out all through the — 
all the while — are not you % ” 

She has turned her sorrowful, kind face toward 
him as he sits again in his leather chair. She has 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


9 


alway resembled Anne in features ; resembled her 
— he has sometimes thought — as copies on young 
women’s easels in the National Gallery on Student 
Days, of Yeronese’s Saint Helena, resemble the 
exquisite original. With grief -paled skin, and deep- 
ened expression, her likeness to his wife is now 
more striking. i( Anne was always so fond of sun- 
shine ! ” The girl pronounces this last clause of her 
sentence with a quiver of reverent admiration in 
her voice, as if the departed’s taste in this respect 
were a rare and original one. 

“ Yes, she liked it.” 

“ I was afraid at first that it was going to be 
overcast all through ; but. at ‘ I am the Resurrection 
and the Life,’ what a flood of sunshine burst out ! 
Darling thing ! ” in a suffocated voice, “ she will 
always be in sunshine like that now ! ” 

He makes no answer, only he leans forward 
futilely holding out his hands toward the cold 
grate, whose ashes his pinched face outdoes in color. 
He has a dull, foggy feeling that he would like to 
wish something better for his pretty one than a per- 
petuity of that chill March sunshine. 

“ To us the empty room and chair, 

To her the Heaven’s completeness,” 


10 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


goes on Susan indistinctly ; and then she covers her 
face with both hands, still keeping her homely atti- 
tude of sitting on her heels before the hearth, and 
through the fingers her tears run fast. He has a 
wretched feeling that he ought to cry too. Had 
ever man better reason ? yet he could quite as easily 
fly over Anne’s garden to the Dissenting College 
beyond it. But Susan does not seem to notice his 
apathy. “ What a number of people were there ! ” 
she goes on, letting fall her hands into her lap, while 
the salt drops race unchecked down her cheeks. 
“ You would have thought that it was the funeral 
of a member of the University, it just showed how 
much liked she was. Although it is out of Term 
time, there w T ere four Heads of Houses.” 

“ Were there?” and again that idle speculation 
flits through his brain, as to how many of those 
august heads will be tweaked with neuralgia or 
swollen with influenza in consequence of their trib- 
ute to his wife’s memory. 

“Considering that you invited nobody, it was 
really wonderful ! And what flowers ! Ho princess 
had ever better flowers.” Through her poor choked 
voice there pierces a tone of something like exulta- 
tion at the thought of the sheaves of costly blossoms 
beneath which her sister has been lowered into the 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


11 


grave. “ It was not only men, but there were such 
numbers of ladies ; so many even whom she knew 
quite slightly.” 

“ It was very kind of them,” he answers, feeling 
vaguely that he ought to say something ; and not 
sure that under the mist that rests upon his spirit, 
he is not a little soothed by this artless record of 
the testimonies rendered to his dead darling. 

“ That American girl brought such a wreath of 
arums ! I am sure she must have sent to London 
for them.” 

“ What American girl ? ” lifting his eyes from 
the ashes, and looking at her with a dull inquiry. 

“ I do not know that you ever saw her, but we 
met her at the evening party at All Souls ; she said 
extraordinary things, as they always do.” 

“ Did she?” 

“ Anne was so much amused with her, because 
she mystified Professor Black by telling him, apro- 
pos of the party, that she ‘ had not had such a 
good time since her first husband died ! ’ Of 
course she had never had a husband at all. I do 
not know whether it is an American expression, 
or whether she invented it herself, but how Anne 
laughed ? ” A waterv smile illumines Susan’s own 
face as she recalls the incident. 


12 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


That smile he is as unable to mimic as he had 
been to emulate her tears ; but he feels that it would 
be unkind not to make some comment on her little 
narrative. 

“ I believe ” — uncertainly — “ that I did once see 
the lady you speak of.” 

“ Anne had such a sense of the ridiculous,” re- 
sumes she, pursuing her rueful retrospect. “JSTo 
one, no grown-up person ever was so light-hearted 
as she ! ” Light-hearted ! The bright, warm word 
sounds grotesque in this funereal, icy little room. 
“ It sounds ridiculous to wish that she could have 
been at her own funeral ; but I am sure nobody 
would have been more astonished than she, to see 
how everybody — everybody that is anybody in Ox- 
ford — was at it ; she always thought so lowly of 
herself ! ” — (with a change of key) — “ Why, they 
actually have not answered the bell all this time ! ” 
— (ringing sharply twice) — “ I am afraid they have 
been neglecting you sadly all these days.” 

“ I do not think so ” (doubtfully). “ I think 
they have meant to be very kind ; they seem 
to have been continually offering me tea and 
things.” 

Susan has risen to her feet in order to give her 
vigorous jerk to the bell-pull, and now, standing be- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


13 


liind him, lays a Land with sisterly kindness on liis 
coat-sleeve. 

“ You will Lave some dinner to-night, will not 
you ? I am sure you look as if you needed it. I 
wonder wLat they Lave got for you ? And you will 
Lave the cLildren down ? ” 

“ No, no ! ” cries lie, witli more life in Lis voice 
tlian slie Las yet lieard in it. “ Not to-niglit, I could 
not bear it.” 

But Vliomme propose. Even as lie speaks, tlie 
study-door is tlirown wide open, and in tLe aperture 
appear two tiny figures, wlio, tlieir usual Lour for 
coming down Laving arrived, and misled by tlie 
twice-rung bell, now appear on tLe tliresLold. Tlieir 
flaxen Lair, preternaturally sleek, tells of tlie recent 
application of a wetted brusli; tLeir fluslied faces 
tell of late weeping, and tLey are dressed in terrific- 
ally new mourning garments. TLey enter, as they 
Lave been evidently bidden by tlieir nursemaid, de- 
corously Land in Land ; but no sooner are tliey with- 
in the room, than Nanny, snatching her chubby fin- 
gers out of her brother’s keeping, makes a headlong 
rush at her father. 

“ Nurse says Mammy is gone to Leaven, and that 
I must always wear a black frock ; and Billy says 
we shall Lave to wear black combinations too ! ” 


14 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Nanny is one of those children who have no lisp- 
ing stage ; from the moment when she first began 
to speak, she has delivered herself of her small ut- 
terances with the most absolute distinctness; and 
having now reached the culminating climax of hor- 
ror and woe expressed in the last clause of her sen- 
tence, she breaks into a loud howl of anguish, in 
which, not to be behindhand, Billy lustily joins. 
The poor father catches his little crying children up 
into his arms, and his own loosed tears burst out. 

“ Yes, Nanny, yes, Billy ; it is quite true ! Mam- 
my has gone to heaven, and now you have nobody 
— nobody — but poor Daddy left ! ” 


CHAPTER II. 

Four days have passed since Mrs. Lygon’s funeral, 
and the American girl’s arum lilies lie as brown and 
dead upon her grave as do the rest of the heaped 
flowers. Four days have passed, and there is no 
longer any fog in her widower’s brain. He knows 
perfectly that his wife is dead, and that he will have 
to pass through the rest of his life as best he may, 
without her. The realization of this fact has come 
to him in hideous rushes of red-hot agony in the 
watches of the night; when he has crammed the 
sheets of his bed into his mouth, to prevent his cries 
and groans from piercing the walls of the old house 
— happily thicker than those of the spick-and-span 
villas in the Parks — and waking the sleeping chil- 
dren. It has come to him also in icy waves of des- 
peration as he bent over his big ledgers. For he 
has gone back to his work at once ; and since he is 
both Estate and House Bursar of his College, he has 


16 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


happily plenty of it. He eats at the usual times 
whatever his establishment chooses to set before 
him, without the faintest conception of whether it 
is good or bad, and since that first outburst of hot 
rain over his little ones, no one has seen him weep. 
On the fourth day he is to dine for the first time 
since her death with Anne’s family. One of the 
few and minute grievances of his married life has 
been his wife’s passion for dining with her own peo- 
ple, and coaxingly compelling him to dine there too, 
when he would have far preferred the inferior cook- 
ery and blissful tete-a-tete of 107, Holywell. To- 
night, as he puts his arm into the sleeve of his dress- 
coat, the memory flashes across him of the foolish 
joke he was shouting to Anne, through his dressing- 
room door, when last he went through that manoeu- 
vre. The recollection scarcely tends to raise his 
spirits, but he is precipitated into a yet deeper depth 
by a very slight incident which precedes his setting 
out. He has gone up to the nursery to bid the chil- 
dren good-night — must he not henceforth be both 
father and mother to them ? — and has opened the 
door so softly, that they, engrossed by some play of 
their own, do not hear his entrance ! The nurse is 
stitching by the just-lit lamp, and the little ones, 
urged by that dramatic instinct, common to all chil- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


17 


dren and which makes us wonder why we do not 
turn out better actors in later life, are performing 
in a little scene of some kind. What that scene is 
meant to represent he does not at first grasp. Billy 
has both his sturdy arms clasped about Nanny’s 
neck, and is saying something in a pseudo-sobbing 
voice over her head, which he interrupts to cry re- 
proachfully, “ You silly ! do not you see ? you are 
us, and I am Daddy.” Then resuming the weep- 
ing tone, which is evidently the essence of the per- 
formance, “ Yes, darlings, you are all I have left 
now ! ” 

“ You are not making half such a funny face as 
Daddy did ! ” objects Nanny, with grave criticism ; 
and then Mr. Lygon recognizes that it is the expres- 
sion of his own grief over them, in the first anguish 
of his loss, that his children are mimicking with so 
much lively ingenuity. He closes the door again 
as softly as he had opened it, nor are they ever 
conscious of having had an auditor. The Lambart 
family — Anne’s maiden name was Lambart — are 
all assembled when he arrives. “All ” means only 
three, father, mother and Susan ; but when you are 
as black as they are to-day, you look more numer- 
ous than you really are. Every one is thankful that 

the butler announces dinner almost instantly upon 
2 


18 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Edward’s arrival. The father had in these family- 
dinners naturally always given his arm to Anne. 
To-night in the mistaken effort to make her absence 
as little conspicuous as possible, they all go in any- 
how, and having done so feel that it is the worst 
course they could have pursued, and that it would 
have been far wiser to have begun as for the rest of 
their lives they will have to go on. In her effort to 
slip as unobtrusively as possible into the place that 
had been her sister’s, Susan knocks down a glass, 
and her father, in a tone of wretched irritability, 
snubs her for her clumsiness. With men even 
oftener than women, grief takes the dress of 
ill-temper, and even when his heart is not as now, 
half-broken, Professor Lambart often speaks crossly. 
Neither his wife nor daughters have ever resented 
this tendency, knowing how little the snappish 
words represent the real feelings toward them of 
the almost absurdly tender heart they belie, and 
how wholly they spring from overwork and over- 
weariness, which in turn arise from that effort to 
combine hard and continuous brain work with a 
passionate love for field sports, which now and 
again lands one of Oxford’s brightest sons in paraly- 
sis or complete collapse of the nervous system. Odd 
as it sounds in a professor, this one is madly fond of 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


19 


hunting, and to-day is one of the bi-weekly days on 
which he is wont to follow the Bicester hounds. 
Though no earthly consideration would have in- 
duced him to go out with them within a week of his 
daughter’s death, yet probably unknown to himself 
the deprivation of his favorite distraction adds to 
the general misery of his condition. They have all 
cried themselves sick, and for the time have no 
more tears within reach ; each is intensely desirous 
to cheer up all the others ; not one has the remotest 
conception how best to compass this end, and the 
result is their one and all rushing at topics of con- 
versation which are no sooner “touched” than 
dropped, for to every one seems to be attached some 
special stinging association with the memory of the 
dead. The mere observation of what a fine day it 
has been makes each member of the party aware 
that all the remaining ones are thinking that it is 
the first time the sun has shown himself since he 
shot his beams upon Anne’s lowered coffin. Ere 
soup is ended all are inwardly wondering how they 
will ever be able to sit through dinner ; and yet by 
the time that the old port is set upon the cloth — the 
butler has brought up a bottle on his own responsi- 
bility, for, as he afterward observed to his subor- 
dinate, “ They seemed such a low lot, that his ’eart 


20 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


bled for them ! ” — by the time, I say, that the old 
red nectar is poured into the two woe-begone men’s 
glasses they are all a shade better. In the drawing- 
room afterward, it is true, there is a universal re- 
lapse. It has been a nightly habit for Anne to play 
a game of backgammon with her father for an 
hour, to keep him awake until he retires to his 
study to work. Edward now sees on Susan’s quiv- 
ering anxious features the doubt whether or not she 
dare offer to take her sister’s place. Susan’s own 
nightly post has been at the piano, where she has 
banged away very indifferently, and with plenty of 
false notes ; but since they are not a musical family, 
much to the satisfaction of herself and her relatives ; 
and generally with an undergraduate or two, or a 
young soldier from Cowley barracks, hanging over 
her. Edward is the only one of the party within 
whose reach the employment of his evening that 
has been customary with him, still is. lie has gen- 
erally sat beside his mother-in-law’s work-table, 
snipping her threads, laughing at her jokes, for she 
is a cheerful-hearted, youngish, handsome woman, 
and answering her questions about the children. 
To-night the work-basket stands 'primly back against 
the wall, its embroidered silk cover thrown over it, 
and not a thread of silk or crewel escaping from it. 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


21 


“ I do not know you without your work,” he 
says, trying to smile ; “ shall not I fetch it for you ? ” 

“Yes, do,” she answers, with a strong effort to 
reply in the same key ; “ yet, no, not to-night. I 
will go back to it to-morrow. You have gone back 
to work upon your History Lectures already ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ How wise of you ! I shall make Kim” with a 
slight look in the direction of her husband, who has 
thrown himself into an arm-chair with such an air 
of depressed absorption in his own thoughts, that 
Susan at once abandons the notion of her timid 
overture, and, seating herself in an unwonted part 
of the room, dismally takes up a religious book. 
“ I shall make Kim go out hunting on Monday.” 

“ I would.” 

The conversation languishes into silence, and it 
is not till several minutes have passed in heavy 
muteness that Mrs. Lambart revives it. 

“I met the children in the park to-day; poor 
darlings, they looked so touching in their black 
frocks.” 

The remembrance of the conditions under which 
he has last seen his offspring is too fresh in his 
memory for him to be able to do more than answer 
shortly, — 


22 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


“ Did they ? ” 

“ They were walking along so good and quiet, 
one on each side of nurse, not playing or running 
about. I think they quite understand their loss, 
poor mites ! They looked subdued and sad.” 

“They are not at all sad really,” replies he dryly. 
“ I suppose you can not expect anything at their 
age, but their want of feeling has surprised me.” 

She looks quickly at him, astonished and rather 
shocked at the severity of his tone. 

“ They are such babies ! only six and four ! ” 

He is silent, being far too sore to inform her 
upon what ground his opinion is built. 

Again silence supervenes, broken only by the 
occasional fall of a coal from the grate, or the in- 
frequent turning of the leaf of her book by Susan 
in her distant upright chair. 

Presently, “ You do not ever think of giving up 
the house and going to live in college % ” asks Mrs. 
Lambart suggestingly. 

“Not for the world ! ” 

There is so much emphasis in his negative that 
for a second a shadowy thought of suspicious jeal- 
ousy for her dead child crosses her brain, as to 
whether he has not already in the background of 
his mind the idea of the possibility in the future of 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


23 


a new center for his home joys to cluster around. 
That thought gives a twinge of sharpness to her 
next words. 

“We should be only too thankful to have the 
dear children.” 

“ No, no,” he answers, almost angrily, “ it is 
quite out of the question. I want them to grow up 
with all her little things about them ; continually 
talking and hearing talk about her. It is the only 
chance of their not forgetting that she ever existed.” 
There is such a ferocity of sorrow in his voice that 
she sees how much her suspicion has wronged him, 
and indignation with herself prevents her making 
any rejoinder. It is he who now resumes the talk. 
“ I have written to Day and Williams ” — (naming a 
well-known firm of statuaries) — “to send me de- 
signs. I want to have the monument put up as 
soon as possible.” 

“ Do not be in too great a hurry,” she cries 
impulsively; “it looks as if we were in haste to 
have done with her.” But he either does not 
hear or regards the suggestion made as below 
notice. 

“ I can not stand that naked red earth. I do not 
know whether I told you my idea : a perfectly plain 
Latin cross lying fiat on the grass, with no stone 


24 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


slab under it I mean — ; on the grass or on a bed of 
pegged-down roses.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ On one side of the cross just her name and the 
two dates of her birth and death, and on the other 
side my name and the date of my birth, the date of 
my death, of course, left blank. 

“ Your name ? ” 

“Yes, why not?” — with a sudden momentary 
loss of his iron self-control — “ I am buried there 
quite as much as she is.” She makes an assenting 
gesture, but grief and pity stop the passage of her 
voice. “ Then at the base ” — passing his hand 
across his forehead — “ I am not quite sure, I have 
not quite made up my mind. I wanted to consult 
you.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I thought of 

‘ Fear no more the heat of the sun 
Nor the furious winter’s rages ; ’ 

but then she never did fear either, bless her ! and 
though it was said originally to a young person, it 
always seems to me to apply more to an old and 
tired one.” 

“ I think I should like something out of the 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


25 


Bible better,” rejoins she diffidently, “ some text, I 
mean, but perhaps that is because I am old-fash- 
ioned.” 

He has leaned back in his chair, and with head 
thrown upward is staring at the ceiling. 

“ Until the day break ! ” he says slowly, as if try- 
ing the words on his mental palate ; “ is that a text ? 
I think not, though it sounds rather like one. On 
the whole I have come to the conclusion that I like 
that as well as anything. It is short, and it is not 
presumptuous, which are surely two merits, — ‘ Until 
the day break ! ’ ” 

And the mother echoes through muffling tears, 
“ Until the day break ! ” 


CHAPTER III. 


The vacation is ended, and Edward Lygon is 
sitting in his Bursary ; a big inkstand on the table 
before him ; many big ledgers, with numerous col- 
umns of figures and entries around him, and one 
open immediately before his eyes ; a long list of 
battels on one side of the page, and tradesmen’s bills, 
etc., on the other. A more prosaic occupation than 
his it would be impossible to imagine ; nor has his 
immediately precedent one, that of adjusting the 
difference between two quarrelsome and mutually 
vituperative college servants, been less so. Ed- 
ward’s college lies at no great distance from his 
house in Holywell, but yet in the short space that 
intervenes between them he seems to himself this 
morning to have met an inordinate number of his 
acquaintance. ISTone of them — and he inw T ardly 
blesses them for it — has attempted to speak to him, 
but they have all looked at him with veiled sym- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


27 


pathy. There has not, indeed, been much veil over 
the admiring compassion for him expressed in the 
very-fully-turned-toward-him pretty face of the 
transatlantic young friend who is accompanying the 
Master of College’s wife on her morning shop- 

ping. Nor is there much disguise about the candid 
utterance of her interest in him to her friend, al- 
most before he is out of hearing. 

“ My ! does not he look forlorn ? But he is a 
beauty ! he is a real lamb ! ” 

The real lamb is stooping his head, which is, in- 
deed, as curly as any lamb’s back, over his figures, 
checking his clerk’s accounts, when the Bursary door 
opens softly and narrowly, and Edward’s sister-in- 
law looks hesitatingly in. Susan is beginning to be 
pink already again and her buried eyes to reappear 
on the surface of her head, but no one can accuse 
her of encouraging the faintest germ of rebudding 
cheerfulness. 

“ Oh, I only came just to see how you were get- 
ting on.” 

“ Thanks, middling.” 

“ May I come in ? shall not I be disturbing you ? ” 

“ By all means ; I am not specially busy.” 

Thus permitted, she enters ; but, having done so, 
seems immediately to repent it. 


28 


A WIDOWER INDEED; 


“ I really have nothing at all to say.” 

“No?” 

“ You are sure I am not in your way ? ” 

“Not at all” 

He places a chair for her, and she sits down. He 
would not for worlds seem aught but welcoming to 
her, but her presence makes his calculations impos- 
sible. He leans back, looking vaguely at the large 
safe in the corner, in which his ledgers and check 
books go to bed at night ; at the dusky portrait of 
the founder on the old oak-paneled wall ; but from 
neither of these objects does he draw the matter of 
the remark he at last makes. 

“ Is your American girl — the one who you say 
brought the arum lilies — is she tall ? ” 

Susan starts slightly. The observation is not in 
the least on the lines she had expected. 

“ I — I think so ! Yes.” 

“ And light-haired ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ And — staring-eyed ? ” 

“ I did not notice that.” 

“ I mean, does she look — not at all shy ? ” 

The girl’s dejected face lights up with a small 
smile. 

“ Did you ever see an American that did ? ” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


2D 


As he does not answer the question, she adds, 
with a touch of curiosity, “ Why do you ask ? ” 

“ Because I think I must have met her this morn- 
ing. Is she staying with Mrs. Brent ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then it must have been she.” He pursues his 
inquiries no further, but after an interval of a few 
thoughtful moments, says, — “ It was exceedingly 
kind of her ; unexpectedly so, in a perfect stranger. 
If you meet her, if you have the opportunity, will 
you thank her for me ? will you tell her how truly 
grateful I am to her % ” Susan’s mind is not a par- 
ticularly quick mover, and it is some seconds before 
she can get over a slight attack of surprise at the 
commission enough to either accept or reject it. 

Then she says slowly, “ But I am not in the least 
likely to meet her, not any more likely than you are ; 
I shall not be going anywhere this Term ; I do not 
feel ” — (very drearily) — “ as if I should ever be in- 
clined to go anywhere again, any Term.” 

His own heart echoes her dismal sentiment so 
fully that he naturally makes no effort to combat it, 
and he contents himself with the words, “ I thought 
you might meet her in the street.” 

“ Yes ” — (not very acquiescently) — “ I might 
meet her in the street, certainly ; ” — (with a good 


30 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


deal more animation) — “ I do not like Americans as 
a rule, do you ? ” 

“ I am not particularly attracted by them. No” 
— (more decidedly) — “ I can’t say that I have liked 
those I have met.” 

“ They have such hideous voices ; they have no 
repose about them ; and they are so irreverent,” re- 
joins Susan, running up with briskness the gamut of 
not altogether novel criticism upon those cousins of 
ours who have so strangely lost all family likeness 
to us. 

“ It is quite true ! perfectly true ! but yet ” — 
rather remorsefully — “ it was kind of her.” 

“ Oh, yes ; it was kind ! no doubt it was kind. 
And dear Anne was amused by her ! She laughed 
almost the whole way home from All Souls at the 
recollection of her sayings.” 

For some reason or other, it pricks us with a 
sharper sting to recall the dead in their gay and 
trifling moments, than when memory presents them 
in the soberer dress of their grave hours ; and the 
picture thus evoked before Edward’s eyes, of his 
sweet wife passing in life and laughter along the 
quaint old-world street that led to her happy little 
home, brings back such a rush of new wretchedness 
over him, that Susan, seeing the added suffering 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


31 


written on his features, makes a couple of compunc- 
tious steps to his side. 

“ You poor boy ! ” she cries, with a kind if not 
very clever attempt to lead the conversation into less 
painful channels ; “ will you have to stay muddling 
over those tiresome figures all day ? ” 

“Not muddling, I hope,” returns he, with a 
faint smile, and acknowledging the goodness of her 
intention by giving a brotherly pat to the hand she 
is affectionately resting on his shoulder. 

As they are thus grouped, both their young 
heads stooped together over the ledger, the door 
opens a second time with a slight premonitory tap, 
as of rather fat, blunt knuckles, and a thickset Un- 
dergraduate puts in his head and shoulders; but, 
catching sight of Susan, begins immediately to with- 
draw them again. “ Oh, I beg your pardon ! I did 
not know that you were engaged.” 

At the sound of his voice Susan has involun- 
tarily — for she is certainly quite unconscious of 
doing anything that she need be ashamed of — raised 
her bending figure, and removed her fingers from 
their contact with Edward’s black coat. “ I knew 
that I should be in the way ! ” she says to him self- 
reproachfully ; then to the Undergraduate, “ Pray 
do not go away ! pray come in ! I am going myself 


32 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


at once.” He enters awkwardly, for he is a cub, 
squinting inquisitively at her from under his eyelids 
as she passes quickly out, throwing to her brother- 
in-law the parting words, “ I shall look in at 107 in 
the course of the afternoon, and we shall see you at 
dinner ? ” 

Her departure does not at once loose the string 
of the Freshman’s tongue ; for a Freshman he is, 
and not a very promising-looking one. He stands 
for a moment or two, turning his college cap awk- 
wardly in his hand, before he blurts out these words, 
“ I — I have come to complain.” 

“ Indeed ! I am extremely sorry ; may I ask of 
what ? ” 

“ I think it right — I really must complain of the 
dinner last night, of the mutton especially ; it was 
extremely coarse, and — and beastly tough.” 

“ This is not the time of year at which mutton 
is at its best,” suggests the Bursar mildly. 

“Is not it? I don’t know about that, I am sure. 
I am no great judge of mutton.” 

“Perhaps you like beef better?” rejoins Edward 
in slightly sarcastic allusion to the youth’s appear- 
ance, an allusion which is quite lost upon the object 
of it, and which only serves to show Lygon, to his 
own surprise, that that tendency to irony, upon 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


33 


which Anne had often softly admonished him, is 
even yet not quite dead in him. 

“Yes, I do, I very much prefer it; but, of 
course, that is not what I am complaining of ; of 
course I know that we must have mutton ; but what 
I — I really must protest against, is the — the quality 
of the meat ; it is not the first time by many that I 
have noticed it, and I — I — am not the only fellow, 
there are several other fellows who make the same 
remark, that they can not get their teeth into it.” 

The young man looks so thoroughly upset by 
the grievance that he is retailing, that a slight and 
half -bitter smile passes over his auditor’s lips, as the 
idea flashes across his mind of the disproportion 
between the afflictions that have fallen respectively 
to his own and his companion’s portion ; but he 
only says civilly, “ I am very sorry, I will certainly 
have it looked into.” 

Pacified by this assurance the young sufferer with- 
draws ; but puts in his head again a moment later 
to add, with an air of even profounder injury than 
before, “ I forgot to mention the worst thing of all, 
there was a slug in the cauliflower ! I found it my- 
self ; there is nothing so beastly — nothing that turns 
one’s stomach so much as a slug in the cauliflower ! ” 

After that he really goes, and with one more 
3 


34 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


melancholy smile at the mental comparison between 
the dimensions of their woes, Edward dismisses the 
boy from his mind. lie has recognized him as the 
nephew of an acquaintance ; of an ill-natured old 
wife, one of the few scandal-mongers of whom 
Oxford can boast, and to whom his kindly and 
guileless Anne had always given a wide berth. 

The connection of ideas is not such as to endear 
the youth to him, nor is there anything very prepos- 
sessing in his own fat face ; but that he could ever 
in the remotest degree influence his — (Edward’s) — 
destiny, is a notion that he certainly could never 
have entertained for a moment as a possibility. 

It is late in the afternoon when he reaches 
home ; his work, naturally thrown into arrears of 
late, detaining him beyond his usual time. So late, 
that Susan has come and gone again, and that the 
servants have made up their minds that he can not 
possibly wish for any tea. Eliza, indeed, faintly 
offers him some, but in so plainly dissuasive a voice 
that he has not the courage to say he should like it, 
but retires meekly into his study, with only one 
lugubrious thought cast to the memory of the little 
brown earthenware teapot, that has hitherto — how- 
ever late the hour of his return — never failed to 
greet him (full of hot tea carefully poured off the 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


35 


leaves) on the hob of the old-fashioned drawing-room 
grate. 

In the study to-day, it being a peculiarly warm 
evening for the time of year, it is needless to say 
that the fire is piled up the chimney almost out of 
sight. By the time he has succeeded in partially 
unbuilding it, and has shorn it of some of its incen- 
diary proportions, he is as hot as a stoker in the 
Red Sea. But he has not allowed himself two min- 
utes’ rest after his exertions in his leathern chair, 
before the idea strikes him that the hour must be 
nearing the children’s bedtime, and that he has 
scarcely seen them for the last three days. Is he 
already beginning to neglect Anne’s thus doubly-for- 
saken babies ? Stung by the remorse engendered 
of this thought, he springs up the stairs three steps 
at a time ; but, arrived outside the nursery door, 
pauses, with a sudden pang of dread, lest, if he 
should come upon them unexpectedly, he might find 
them a second time enacting that cruel little drama 
which had so wrung his heart on his last visit to 
them. He purposely treads heavily, and turns the 
handle noisily to warn them of his approach. But 
his fears are needless. They are absorbed, as he 
soon perceives, in an occupation a great deal more 
riveting to them than any theatrical representation. 


36 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Tliej are sitting opposite to each other on the floor, 
with their solid pink legs stretched out straight be- 
fore them, and their four immense blue eyes fixed 
upon the contents of a bag of chocolate creams, 
which, outpoured on Nanny’s baby lap, are being 
slowly and laboriously divided into two equal por- 
tions by Billy, his sister closely watching him to 
insure that there is no imposition. It is such a re- 
lief to the poor father to find them thus innocently 
employed that he kneels down on the floor beside 
them, with a momentarily lightened heart. 

“ Why, Nanny, who gave you all those 
goodies?” His daughter’s answer is primarily to 
thrust two of the delicacies indicated at once into 
her own rosy mouth as if to protect them at least 
against confiscation ; and secondly, either as a bribe 
or from an impulse of genuine magnanimity, to try 
to thrust a third between her parent’s lips. He is 
so delighted with her generosity that he catches her 
up in his arms, kissing her fat neck, and answering 
gratefully, — 

“ No, thank you, darling ! Daddy is not hun- 
gry ! Where did you get them from ? Who gave 
them to you ? ” 

But Miss Lygon’s eyes are with her heart, and 
both are pursuing the chocolates which, escaping 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


37 


from the tiny hands that in vain tried to arrest them, 
roll far and wide over the nursery Kidder ; and 
even when the question is repeated, she only answers 
briefly, — 

“ A lady.” 

“ She met us in High,” cries Billy more diffusely ; 
“ and took us in to Boffin’s, and gave us these. She 
talked so funny ; she said, 4 How’s your poor pap — 
pa ? ’ just like that ! ” 

Edward winces. The ingenious liveliness with 
which his son mimics the accent of the unknown 
benefactress recalls to his mind the painful realism 
of the child’s former imitation of himself. 

“ She was a Yank ! ” adds Kanny, who, having 
placed her goodies beyond the reach of ill-fortune, is 
now prepared to join more freely in the conversa- 
tion. There is always something so comic in the 
excessive clearness of Hanny’s pronunciation, coupled 
with the extreme smallness of her voice, that Ed- 
ward bursts out laughing. 

“ What a funny little girl you are ! ” 

The child accepts the compliment sedately. 

“ I’m a rum ’un,” she says gravely. “ Sam says, 
I’m a rum ’un ; and I am ! ” 

“ And who is Sam, pray ? ” asks her father, still 
laughing, but rather startled at this new claimant to 


38 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


his daughter’s acquaintance, to whom he is thus 
suddenly and unexpectedly introduced. 

“ Sam is the horsier at the King’s 5 Ead,” replies 
Nanny glibly, but with an audaciously fancy treat- 
ment of the aspirate in her speech. 

“ And how do you come to know the ostler at 
the King’s Head?” inquires Edward, now quite 
grave. But the child, buttoning up the red bud of 
her mouth, and casting a rather apprehensive glance 
at the nurse, who, at this moment, enters the room, 
declines to extend her confidence on that head. 

As Mr. Lygon walks through the staringly light 
spring evening to dinner with his relatives in law, 
he asks himself uneasily what steps he ought to 
take to hinder further strides to intimacy, between 
his daughter and the ostler at the King’s Head. 


CHAPTER IV. 


“But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree, 

Which living waves where thou didst cease to live, 

And saw around me the wide field revive 
With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring 
Come forth her work of gladness to contrive, 

With all her reckless birds upon the wing, 

I turn’d from all she brought to those she cfuld not bring.” 

It is the mode now to run down the poet who 
wrote these lines, but at least they are the expression 
of a universal and perennial pain. Edward Lygon 
has never become so fully imbued with young Ox- 
fordism as to be able to sneer properly at Byron, or 
set the lucid “ Sordello ” and the sprightly “Fifine” 
upon the pinnacle they rightly occupy above the 
head of that discredited bard. Like the rest of us, 
he has known his Waterloo verses from infancy, 
and is saying them to himself this April morning as 
he walks with a rage of grief in his heart under the 
elms — so cruelly beheaded of late years by Vandal 


40 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Curators of the Parks — that vainly try to mask 
Keble’s hideous front with their mutilated arms. 

“I turn’d from all she brought to those she could not bring.” 

These cruel poets ! Do not they rather heighten 
than soften our sufferings, by the way that, in their 
cunning, they furnish us with the aptest expres- 
sions of them ? 

u Wenn’s nur nicht Fruhling war,” 

he says out loud ; as the “ reckless birds ” — Oxford 
is rich in song-birds — shout their little raptures 
round him. “ If it only were not spring ! ” To 
die in the spring, when everything else is coming to 
life again. Was there ever anything so stupid? so 
illogical ? Charles Lamb, in that one of his essays 
which seems too exquisite for even praise to dare to 
touch, “ Dream Children,” has told us of how, — 
not alL at once, but by and by, — the full extent 
and compass of a bereavement dawned upon him — 
“ and how when he died, though he had not been 
dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great 
while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and 
death ; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty 
well at first, but afterward it haunted and haunted 
me.” 

Edward, indeed, has never thought that he bore 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


41 


Anne’s death pretty well at first ; hut, at his present 
distance from it, it seems to him as though in those 
earliest days he had not caught even a glimpse of the 
intolerable void ugliness of the vista that stretches 
between this insolent spring morning and his own 
uncertain grave. At first he had lain prostrate; 
and the black wheels of his fate had rolled over him 
unresisted ; but since then, he has struggled to his 
knees ; and night and day, night and day, is shaking 
his impotent fists, and knocking his helpless head 
against the dumb and dreadful wall of destiny. 
Round the immensity of the central loss, a thousand 
minor wretchednesses and discomforts are begin- 
ning to cluster. They were swallowed up at first in 
the deluge that had effaced all the landmarks of his 
life ; but as his senses and nerves begin to resume 
their functions, he awakes to the fact that he is not 
only superlatively miserable, but exceedingly uncom- 
fortable. A young widower left saddled with tiny 
children and inexperienced servants, is always a 
pitiable object; and the monotony of gloom that 
overspreads his whole being, is streaked with lurid 
flashes of misgiving that his children are deteriorat- 
ing ; are being neglected ; are beginning already to 
lose the edge of their recollection of the. mother 
they have lost. Even to his preoccupied eyes and 


42 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


indifferent palate, it has become evident that his 
little old house — of yore so dapper and dainty, — is 
putting on a slovenly air; and that his dinner, 
which had wont to be so delicate and appetizing, 
is ill-cooked and untempting. It would seem nat- 
ural that for the cure or at least abatement of all 
these minor ills he should apply to the children’s 
grandmother, practiced housekeeper as she is ; but 
as ill-luck will have it, she has been summoned away 
to attend the lingering sick-bed of a sister; and 
though her absence has already lasted over a fort- 
night, there seems as yet small prospect of her 
return. There is Susan, it is true; yes, there is 
certainly Susan; but Susan has always been a 
rather helpless person ; and of late she has somehow 
seemed more difficult to get hold of, than in the 
first week or two of their joint bereavement. He 
is always going in search of her driven by that 
famine for free converse about the dead, which he 
can obtain only with her, since the father has tied 
an iron band of silence round his grief, which not 
one of his family dare untie ; he is always going in 
search of her, but of late he has been less and less 
often successful in finding what he sought. And 
even when he has gained his end and secured her 
for one of those long walks and longer talks, with 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


43 


their monotony of theme, which are the only things 
which make life endurable to him, even then he 
is not quite sure that those very walks and talks 
do not leave him yet more saturated with woe 
than they found him. It is true that Susan is 
always ready, nay eager, to talk of the departed 
one ; but she is not always happy in the form taken 
by her recollections and lamentations. A fine tact 
does not always guide her well-meant utterances — 
and more than once she has blundered into a remi- 
niscence which has had a touch of the painful in it 
— what happiest marriage is quite without such ? — 
and her repentance for having done so, though sin- 
cere, is none the less too late. Her very physical 
likeness to Anne at once tantalizes and torments 
him ; tricks in her gait ; motions with her hands ; 
turns in her speech ; alike, and yet so emptily, iron- 
ically unlike. There is something almost tiresome 
in the persistence with which he seeks her society. 
It must surely end by giving him a little of the 
balm, or at least the nepenthe, that he, with so de- 
spairing a pertinacity, asks of it. He is seeking her 
this April morning ; and, since it is not at an hour 
when he is in the habit of presenting himself, he is 
relieved when the butler answers affirmatively his 
inquiry as to whether Miss Lambart is at home. 


44 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


The drawing-room — always a pleasant room — looks 
and smells even more agreeably than usual to-day ; 
thanks to an immense tray full of primroses, daffo- 
dils, jonquils, and little mountains of fresh moss, 
with its excellent perfume of wet green places, be- 
fore which Susan is standing. 

“ What an enormous time flowers take in arrang- 
ing ! ” says she in an exhausted tone, sitting down. 
“ I have been at these ever since breakfast, and I do 
not seem to get much ‘ forrarder.’ Mother gener- 
ally does them ; she says that when she was a girl 
people had never more than one tight nosegay in 
the middle of a table ; no greenery, and no wild 
flowers ; it must have been truly hideous ; but I 
declare it had its advantages ! ” 

“lam sorry you are busy — ” begins he ; holding 
a primrose absently to his nose ; while he vaguely 
wonders whether it can be their now entire flower- 
lessness which gives their present air of dreariness 
to his own little rooms. 

“Why are not you busy too?” puts in she 
rather quickly, “ How is it that you are not at the 
Bursary ? ” 

“I have taken a holiday,” answers he slowly, 
though, indeed, there is not much of a holiday look 
on his face. “ I came to ask whether you would 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


45 


come with me — ” He is interrupted by her sudden- 
ly getting up again and beginning to pour water 
rather noisily out of a tin can into one of her vases. 

“ I did not mean to go out this morning. I 
must not get into the habit of going out in the 
morning. It cuts into one’s day so.” 

It is the first time that she has refused to ac- 
company him, and it is in a wounded voice that he 
rejoins, taking up his hat as he speaks, — 

“ It does not matter, then, I only thought you 
might like to come with me to the cemetery ; the 
tombstone is put up, it was finished last night, and 
I thought you might like to see it.” 

“ Of course I will come ! ” cries she in an entire- 
ly different key, hastily setting down her water- 
pot. “ Finished, is it ? — and is it right ? Is it 
what we wished? Oh, come at once. Why could 
you not have told me before?” Ere she has 
finished uttering the last unfounded reproach she 
has run out of the room to fetch her hat. Despite 
her haste, however, she will not set off before 
she has left a message for some one with the 
butler. Edward does not overhear the exact drift 
of the sentence, but he catches a name which occurs 
in it, the name of Mandeville, which he recognizes 
as that of the subaltern from Cowley Barracks, who, 


46 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


in what now appear to be the enormously distant 
days before Anne’s death, used to hang over Susan 
while she was punishing her piano with even greater 
assiduity than her more legitimate prey, the under- 
graduates. The message is for Mandeville, is it ? 
It is obvious, then, that she must have been expect- 
ing him, and that to this expectation was due 
her great reluctance to give him — Edward — her 
company. The thought brings a pang with it. He 
is going to lose Susan too ! They walk down the 
Parks road with silent speed, met and passed by 
hurrying boys in cap and gown, looking so good 
and industrious with their note-books under their 
arms ; for all the melodious clock voices, which 
whoso has lived within earshot of, for a while feels 
lost and astray in muter places, are calling them to 
Lecture. Our couple are passing Trinity’s wrought- 
iron gates before either speaks, then Edward says, 
suddenly, — 

“ You do not know much about housekeeping, 
do you ? ” 

“Ho, I do not, I am ashamed to say. I have 
not ever had much chance of learning ; I suppose,” 
sighing, “ that having always lived with very capa- 
ble people does make one rather futile ; why do you 
ask?” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


47 


“I thought you might help me/’ he answers 
dispiritedly ; “ of course I am away most of the day, 
and things seem to be all wrong somehow. The 
children have got hold of such extraordinary expres- 
sions. Billy asked me the other day whether I had 
ever been ‘ tight,’ and Nanny once talked of the 
ostler at the King’s Head as if she were on the 
most intimate terms with him ; I have never since 
been able to get her to tell me anything more about 
him ; you know how secretive little children can be, 
but I do not feel at all sure that they are not quite 
as dear friends as ever.” 

“ The ostler at the King’s Head ! ” repeats Susan, 
breaking into a laugh, and then pulling herself sud- 
denly up at the remembrance of the errand on which 
they are bent, “ what a very odd friend for Nanny 
to choose ! ” 

“ I do not like that nurse,” continues he, looking 
appealingly at his companion, though with a dis- 
couraged feeling that she is not a source from which 
much practical aid is ever likely to come. “ I never 
did, nor did Anne, and yet I have no particular 
fault to find with her. I am quite at a loss; of 
course, being absent from the house as much as I 
must be, I am quite in the dark as to what goes on 
in it all day.” 


48 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


“ It looks quite right outside, I often pass it,” 
answers Susan brilliantly; and then, conscious of 
having said a very stupid thing, she hurries on with, 
“ I am surprised at you of all people being in house- 
hold difficulties. I should have thought that you 
must have had so much practice in that sort of 
thing in your Bursary work.” 

“ So much practice in dismissing nurse-maids ? ” 
asked he with tart irony. She reddens. 

“ Of . course I do not mean that. I mean that 
you must have such experience in dealing with serv- 
ants; what a way you have of making one feel 
a fool ! ” The tears are in her eyes and voice. It 
is the first time that they have bickered since 
their joint calamity — previously, it had not been 
an uncommon occurrence — and the consciousness 
of having done so shocks and discomforts them 
both so much that they reach the cemetery with- 
out having exchanged a single syllable more. 
The burying-ground is in gala to-day ; fuller even 
of flowers than of dead. This is partly owing 
to the fact that the April sun is imperatively 
calling all the narcissus and daffodil tribe planted 
on each trim resting - place from underground ; 
and partly to that other fact of its being Saturday, 
when every one is dressing anew their wreaths and 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 49 

crosses, and replacing faded blossoms with fresh 
ones. 

Anne’s grave lies at some distance from the en- 
trance in a sunny plat, as yet not too closely set 
round with other dead. As they near it, Edward 
exclaims in a tone of disgust and vexation, — 

“ There is some one there already ! ” 

“ Of course she will go as soon as she sees us,” 
answers Susan, adding, as a closer view reveals the 
intruder more plainly, “ Oh, I know who it is ! It 
is Miss Wrenn, the American.” 

The American, unconscious of their approach, is 
standing at the foot of the grave, her tall and 
slender figure bent a little forward, so as to enable 
her to read more easily the short sentence into 
which Anne’s widower has condensed his trembling 
hopes : 

“ Until the Day Break,” 

while her two hands hang down in front of her, 
carefully and lightly holding a garland of purple 
violets. The grass muffles the sound of approach- 
ing feet, and it is only the swish of Susan's gown 
against an adjacent headstone that lets her know of 
the presence of the sable-dressed young pair. An 
English woman would be discomfited at the en- 
counter, but it takes more than that to upset the 
4 


50 


A WIDOWER, INDEED. 


equilibrium of a child of Columbia. She turns and 
faces them, with straightforward, grave self-posses- 
sion. “ Excuse my apparent intrusion in a locality 
where you would naturally prefer to be alone,” she 
says in a voice which, though very unmistakably 
hailing from across the great water, is not altogether 
an unpleasant one. “ Perhaps you will permit an 
American woman to offer this little tribute.” As 
she speaks, she slightly indicates the circle of vio- 
lets, looking at Edward the while with a frank and 
open-eyed sympathy, in which, with another glance 
of her shrewd, kindly, hazel eyes, she includes 
Susan. 

Neither of the mourners is capable of acknowl- 
edging her friendly action or words by more than 
— he a lifting of the hat, she a small and agitated 
bow. Probably the stranger expects no more, for, 
without confusion or ungraceful haste, she stoops 
and lays her little offering on the speckless white- 
ness of the new cross, that stretches its prone arms 
along, among the daisied grass, and then walks 
slowly away. Before she is out of sight, the other 
two have forgotten her existence, as they stand one 
on either side of the solemn marble symbol, looking 
at the black letters that stand out almost aggressively 
in their inky sharpness. Susan is on the side on 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


51 


which Anne’s name is cut, and she murmurs the 
brief inscription half aloud, “ Anne Lygon. Born 
1862. Died 1889.” “ Only twenty-seven ! only 

twenty-seven ! ” she repeats twice over, with an ac- 
cent of doleful surprise, as if the early snapping of 
her sister’s life-thread were a new discovery to her. 
Edward, opposite to her, is staring hard at the blank 
space left after the record of his own birth on the 
other side; while a fierce thirst parches him, a 
thirst to be able to drag out of the future the secret 
of the date that will at last be cut there. The long- 
ing grows so intense, that with the idea of lessening 
it a little, he moves to the spot at the grave foot, 
which the American girl had occupied, and his eyes, 
as hers had done, peruse the sentence chosen by 
himself : 

“Until the Day Break.” 

It has a consoling look ; yes, to a stranger it 
would doubtless have a consoling look ; but as it 
prints itself on the retina of his dry eyes, what an 
ugly river of doubt steals over his heart ! 

“Until the Day Break.” 

indeed ! “ When will it break ? Will it ever break ? 
Is there any day to break ? ” In such a mood as 


52 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


this, it is worse than useless to linger here, and he 
turns restlessly away. 

“ Are you going already ? ” asks his companion, 
surprised and concerned. “ Oh, I wanted to stay 
much longer ! I have not half seen it ! and oh — ” 
melting into soft tears — “ how lovely, how comfort- 
ing your words are ! I am so glad you chose them.” 


CHAPTEK V. 


Outside the cemetery gate Edward is naturally 
turning to the left, toward Holywell ; but Susan 
comes to a halt and looks fidgetily in the opposite 
direction. 

“ I think I will go this way,” glancing toward 
the right, “ I shall get home quicker.” 

“ Are you in so great a hurry ? ” 

“ Oh, no, nothing particular,” with a slightly 
confused air. “ Only one never knows ; I might be 
wanted.” 

He does not embarrass her by any further ques- 
tion; but lets her go, passing on his own home- 
ward road, with a fresh recurrence of that pang 
which had smitten him as he half overheard her 
hurried, earnest injunction to the butler. Though 
by another way than Anne’s, there is no doubt that 
Susan, too, is about to pass out of his life. He 
walks along with his head so bent, and his eyes so 


54 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


unbrokenly fastened on the pavement, that he has 
almost come up with a figure sauntering more 
slowly ahead of him, before he recognizes in its 
well-set shoulders and long limbs, the proportions 
of the lady who had so lately addressed him. He 
is about to pass her with no further salutation than 
taking off his hat, when an impulse of compunc- 
tious gratitude causes him instead to pause beside 
her. 

“ I must apologize,” he says, speaking with that 
punctilious courtesy which, originally born with 
him, has been yet further fostered by Anne, but 
which is by no means a usual characteristic of the 
Oxford tutor ; “ I must apologize for never having 
acknowledged my obligations to you for your most 
unlooked-for kindness in bringing flowers, not only 
to-day, but on — on a former occasion.” He would 
have said, “on the occasion my wife’s funeral,” 
but the dreadful words choke him. His address 
does not appear in the least to surprise her; she 
continues her tranquil course, looking at him 
with the direct and undisguised friendliness of 
her eyes from beneath a very smart sunshade; 
nor does she think it necessary to disclaim his 
thanks. 

“ I liked to do it,” she says quietly, if so high a 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


55 


voice could ever sound quiet ; adding, “ I never met 
Mrs. Lygon but once, but I thought her then just 
the loveliest thing I had ever seen.” 

He gives a sort of start — a sort of shocked start 
— at hearing her pronounce so outspokenly and un- 
hesitatingly the name of his dead wife ; that name 
which as yet none of his acquaintances, since her 
death, have approached save with the most cautious 
circumlocution. And yet her utterance is not the 
result of want of feeling, since a genuine compas- 
sion is shining at him from out of the bright eyes 
under the gay En Tout Cas. But though he 
recognizes this, he can not recover enough from 
that first douche to pursue the talk, and they walk 
on in silence till, at Ho. 106, Holywell, next door 
to his own house, Miss Wrenn brings her light 
step to a full stop. 

“ You are going to pay my neighbors a visit ? ” 
he asks with a slight parting smile, civil and melan- 
choly. 

“ I lodge here,” replies she briefly. 

“You? By yourself?” If he tries, which is 
doubtful, he certainly does not succeed in keeping a 
perceptible consternation out of the voice in which 
he puts his queries. 

“ I have got a dicky-bird,” replies she, with a 


56 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


beam of amusement lurking in the tail of one hazel 
orb. 

“ But I thought — I understood you were staying 
with the Brents ? ” 

“ The Brents are gone off prowling somewhere,” 
rejoins she airily ; “ but I really could not leave this 
charming little town until I had found out what 
was behind all the little doors in the queer old 
walls.” Her auditor is rendered so breathless by 
this disrespectful and patronizing mode of epito- 
mizing the charms of the University, that he stands 
mute, while she continues in an expansive way, 
“I’ll confide to you that I poke my head into 
them whenever they are ajar, and I always find 
something green and flowery. Is there,” glancing 
at his small shut portal in an inquiring way, “is 
there anything green and flowery behind your little 
door?” 

“No, that there is not!” he answers in such a 
heartbroken tone that she regards him pityingly. 

“ Then you must come and see my garden,” re- 
marks she frankly. “ It is a regular garden out of 
a story-book ; but then everything in England looks 
like that to us. There is even a hero and a 
heroine — my landlady’s daughter and one of your 
students ; I caught them at the end of the sixteenth 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


57 


chapter the other night in the moonlight. Some- 
times when I come home late at night myself, I go 
and snoop about a bit in the dew ! ” 

This last sentence, with its apparent implication 
of habitual raking, shocks the hearer almost more 
than the young lady’s announcement of her adop- 
tion of a bachelor life. It shocks him so much that 
for a moment or two it makes him forget his ever- 
present personal wretchedness as he stands doubting 
whether he ought not to say something hortatory to 
her. She looks so very young, as if she had 
stepped such a little way into the twenties, and so 
exceedingly pretty — not in her country’s ordinary 
fragile, hot-liouse style, but with a wholesome, vigor- 
ous and yet sufficiently slender comeliness. 

But either it dawns upon him that there* is less 
than no reason why he should undertake the office 
of her Mentor, or something in her whole look 
makes him feel that she does not need and would 
not like one. And certainly there is no flavor of 
either rebuke or exhortation in his next speech, 
when it at last comes forth : “lam forgetting an- 
other subject of gratitude that I have to you — your 
so kindly noticing my children, and giving them 
bonbons.” 

Her face, hitherto decorous and grave but for 


58 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


that one mirthful eyebeam, breaks out into a broad 
bright smile. 

“ Oh, they were such a little pair of ducks ! ” 
she cries effusively. “ I liked to see them open 
their little bills and swallow down the candy.-’ A 
moment later, with an air of undisguised good- 
comradeship, “ I dare not offer you any candy ; but 
if you’ll come in and have that funny little English 
meal of afternoon tea with me, I should like to show 
you my wigwam.” 

So saying, without waiting for an answer, she 
put her latch-key into the door ; and with one final 
look, in which there is as little attempt to disguise 
the unaffected approbation of the object on which it 
rests as its compassion, she disappears within. Had 
she tarried a moment longer, she would probably 
have come in for a horrified disclaimer of the possi- 
bility of his accepting her or any one else’s invita- 
tion ; but the nimbleness of her movements saves her 
from this rebuff, and when once she is out of sight, 
he scarcely gives her another thought. He is much 
more taken up with a disproportionate remorse at 
having snapped at his sister-in-law, and with a sore 
and apprehensive jealousy of the robber whom he 
sees looming on that sister-in-law’s horizon. 

Both these emotions combine to send him hurry- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


59 


ing under the budding elms, past the acutely green 
gooseberry-bushes and the physicky Tacamahacs in 
the villa gardens, even earlier than is his wont on 
the next afternoon. Afternoon , not forenoon. He 
will not tease Susan again in her morning hours. 
It is unreasonable to suppose that even she, that any 
one except himself, can wish to talk of Anne all 
day. 

Before the Lambart’s door a horse is being 
walked up and down by a stable-boy, and Edward 
scarcely knows why he asks the unnecessary ques- 
tion, “ Is Mr. Mandeville here ? ” 

Mr. Mandeville is not only here, but is making a 
very great deal of noise. The opening drawing- 
room door reveals him sitting on an “ occasional ” 
chair, with Nanny on his knee, dancing her up and 
down, and shouting out at the top of his voice, with 
perfect gravity, “ Poo-ty, poo-ty, pie ! pie ! ” At 
the second “ pie,” given on a very high note, she 
doubles up her chubby fist and gives him a sounding 
blow in what she calls the “ squeaking-place ! ” It 
certainly deserves its name, for he instantly emits an 
ear-piercing yell which comes to an end with ludi- 
crous suddenness as his eye alights on Edward’s 
black figure in the doorway. That figure makes an 
involuntary movement toward retreat. He had 


60 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


thought that this was the one room in the world 
that he might enter without bringing into it a jar- 
ring element, and even here he seems to be a dis- 
sonant note. 

“Are you going?” asks the young soldier, 
bathed in confusion, and laughing guiltily. “I 
have noticed that when I sing this song, people gen- 
erally do go ; but Nanny would have it ! ” As he 
speaks Susan comes forward from behind him, and 
with a not much less guilty air than his. It is ap- 
parent that she has been laughing too, and is deeply 
ashamed of it. Nanny is the only one whose mirth 
continues unchecked ; not only unchecked, but ap- 
parently so uncheckable, that one of her companions 
in sin — the man — ends by hurrying her away, with 
the bribe of giving her a ride on his horse. 

“ Had not you better go too ? ” inquires Edward, 
seeing, or fancying that he sees, a wistful look in 
the eye with which Susan follows the departing 
couple ; and though he had arrived full of compunc- 
tion at his yesterday’s snubbing of her, he is vexed 
to find a point of tartness in this new speech. 

“ I do not think there is any need,” replies she* 
wisely answering his letter, not his spirit. “ He will 
take great care of her ; and she is so fond of him.” 

“ Perhaps she is not singular in that,” rejoins he 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


61 


jealously ; but seeing her turn away offended and 
flushing, he adds hastily, trying to give his last 
utterance the air of a pleasantry, “ I suppose he has 
quite superseded the ostler in her heart ? ” 

“ I suppose so ” (stiffly) ; but a minute or two 
later, with a praiseworthy resolution to be forbear- 
ing and good-tempered, “ You have come to fetch 
me to take a walk ? The wind has gone back into 
the east, but I dare say it will not be unpleasant. 
Would you mind” — (with hesitation) — “waiting a 
little ? In a few minutes he will be gone, or, if he 
is not, I will tell him to go.” 

For a moment or two the man addressed is too 
much taken aback to reply. It argues such a pitch 
of familiarity to be able to tell a person to leave your 
house, that he sees things must have gone farther 
than his worst misgivings had conjectured. She 
mistakes the cause of his silence, and says nervously, 
“ 1 am afraid you thought him very unfeeling for 
making such a noise ? ” 

Her advocacy has the exactly opposite effect to 
what she intends. “ Why should not he be unfeel- 
ing ? ” asks Edward, no longer resisting the bitter- 
ness of his spirit — 

“What’s Hecuba to him, 

Or he to Hecuba ? ” 


62 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


“ He is not unfeeling ! ” cries Susan, flaring into 
red and open partisanship. “ If he is unfeeling, I 
am unfeeling too ! I am sure I have been miserable 
enough to please anybody all this while ” — ( “All 
this while! just six weeks,” is his mental com- 
ment) — “ but ” — (the spirit of youth breaking into 
revolt against the doom laid upon it) — “ but one 
must be a little cheerful every now and then ; if one 
did not, one would go mad ! ” 

Certainly, for a couple of people who are sin- 
cerely attached to each other, Edward and Susan 
have a happy knack of reciprocally rasping one 
another’s nerves. 

“Is it possible,” he asks in a shocked voice, 
“ that you think I am twitting you with not being 
miserable enough ? Why are we always bickering 
now ? One would have thought that we had had 
enough to draw us together.” 

“ Oh, so we have ! so we have ! ” cries she com- 
punctiously ; “ and we are drawn together ! I am 
sure I like being with you more than with anybody 
— almost.” The “ almost ” is at such a very great 
distance from the rest of the sentence, and is spoken 
in so much lower a key, as to give the idea that its 
speaker would quite as soon that Edward should not 
hear it ; but he does. 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


63 


a There is no reason, after all, why we should 
not set off on our walk at once,” pursues the girl, 
with a feverish effort at reparation ; “ we shall lose 
the best part of the day if we do not.” 

It is the misfortune of knowing each other too 
well, and the reason why friends quarrel more than 
acquaintances, that the too-accustomed ear detects 
shades of meaning that wholly escape the less fa- 
miliar one. And now, beneath the surface readiness 
of her tone, he detects the real reluctance. 

“But I do not want you to-day,” he answers 
with a sad little smile. “ I am going farther than 
you would care to do — farther, I mean ” — in anxious 
haste to change his phrase so as to avoid any hint of 
reproach — “ than you could manage. I shall take a 
good stretch to Shotover probably.” 

“To Shotover!” — (in a voice that, though it 
tries to sound reproachful, only succeeds in sound- 
ing relieved) — “ oh, then of course you do not want 
me ! ” and, though she accompanies him to the liall- 
door, protesting that she feels quite hurt at being 
shaken off, and finally offering even to attempt Shot- 
over, he carries with him through his lonely walk the 
knowledge that, spite of all her compunction, she is 
profoundly relieved at having exchanged for one 
afternoon at least, for something far sweeter to her, 


64 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Iris own triste fellowship. The last time he had 
visited Shotover it had been riding, and Anne had 
been cantering by his side along the charming 
grassy plateau at the hill-top. Anne never tried 
to shirk his society, nor needed to make clumsy 
attempts at reparation for having done so. As on 
his return home down Holywell he nears his own 
door, he sees, to his surprise, his American neighbor 
issuing from it with his son in her hand. 

“ Billy is coming to drink tea with me in my wig- 
wam,” says she, greeting him with the easy readi- 
ness of an old acquaintance ; then putting her head 
rather on one side with a persuasive though not at 
all flirtatious air, “Will not you come too, Mr. 
Lygon ? ” 

The invitation takes him so aback that he almost 
stutters, in the hurry of his protest that he does not 
go anywhere. 

“ But this is not anywhere ! ” rejoins she with 
cajoling perseverance. “ Since you must drink tea 
in Holywell, how much difference does it make 
which number you drink it at ? ” Then, as he still 
looks distressed and unacquiescent, she adds play- 
fully, “ It is your paternal duty to chaperon Billy 
and me ! ” 

Never since his loss has any one spoken playfully 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


65 


to him, and it half shocks, half revives him. He 
keeps an awkward silence, and she continues, u I 
can tell you that you will not get any tea at home, 
for I have just seen your whole domestic establish- 
ment emigrate in a body ! ” 

At a happier time his fastidious taste would have 
suffered at her employment of long words instead of 
short ones, but at the present moment her sentence 
only brings to him afresh his sordid house-worries ; 

: and, scarcely knowing what he does, Billy pulling 
at his hand and crying in a little squeaky, urgent 
voice, “ Do come, daddy ! ” he follows her. 

The house is one that has usually been let out 
as undergraduate lodgings, and a person whose ac- 
quaintance with the American nation was limited 
would wonder how a young woman had effected an 

* entrance there. Having once yielded, Edward, 
without further remonstrance, at her bidding sits 

> down on the young lady’s favorite chair, hospitably 
indicated by her. Unconsciously to himself, he is 
. vaguely soothed by the pleasant sound of the boiling 

* kettle, and the scent of the many flowers. He has 
had no flowers, and he doubts whether his kettle has 

f ever really boiled since Anne died. He has time to 
look about him, while she hoists Billy on to the broad 
^ window-ledge, and tucks her pocket-handkerchief 
^ 5 


66 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


under his fat chin with a masterly quickness and 
neatness that speaks of experience gained among lit- 
tle brethren across the great water. Edward looks 
rather nervously at his olf spring, and asks, “ Will not 
he fall off ? ” to which she responds with a touch of 
benevolent scorn, “ Do you suppose there is not room 
there for a snip of six ? ” He had not known that 
his son was a “ snip,” but the expression, in her 
sense, obviously carries reassurance with it ; and she 
goes on, “ I do not wish to be forth-putting, but is 
it ‘ Bridget’s Sunday out ’ with each of your serv- 
ants three times a week ? ” 

A faint involuntary smile just touches his melan- 
choly mouth at the odd dress in which she has 
clothed her kind inquiry. “ I am sure they do not 
mean it, but they certainly do not make us very 
comfortable.” 

All his life he has leaned upon a woman’s help, 
and this woman appears so frankly interested, that 
the temptation is irresistible to unravel a bit of the 
skein of domestic disaster for her benefit. “ It does 
not matter much about the others, but I am some- 
times afraid that the nurse introduces my children 
to very odd acquaintances ; the ostler at the King’s 
Head — ” He breaks off suddenly, seeing that Billy, 
with his pink ears well pricked, and his forget-me- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


67 


not eyes wide open, is listening with an interest that 
makes even the muffin in his plump hand lose its 
savor. Miss Wrenn’s look follows the direction of 
his, and she smiles understandingly. Beckoning 
Edward unceremoniously to follow her to the end 
of the long room, she asks, in low-toned confidence, 
“ Why do you not ship her ? ” 

It is only from the context that he gathers what 
“ ship her ” means. The idea, though startling, 
chimes in with what has already passed through his 
own brain as vaguely and unattainably desirable; 
but he says helplessly, “ Yet what should I do if I 
did ? How could I replace her ? 55 

“ What is the matter with Mrs. Lambart ? ” asked 
she brusquely. He looks puzzled, not understand- 
ing the American meaning of the phrase. 

“ I hope that nothing is the' matter with her ; 
but she is away from home.” 

“ And your sister-in-law, for example ? ” 

“My sister-in-law — ” he begins, and pulls up 
short, as before, at the mention of the ostler. He 
must not confess to this perfect stranger that, as far 
as the practical matters of life go, Susan is perfectly 
useless and helpless. The compassion which has 
hitherto been the predominant expression of her 
bright eyes, is immediately changed for a very busi- 


68 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


ness-like one, dashed with contempt for his incom- 
petency. 

“ Nurses ! why the woods are full of nurses ! I’ll 
find you ten myself, sooner than that those little 
kittens should be so neglected ! ” 

He gasps. The amount of his acquaintance with 
her justifies so little according to the ideas he has 
been brought up in, this headlong rush on her part 
into the privacy of his menage, and her appearance 
is so very unlike that of the roomy, elderly females 
whom he has been wont to connect in his mind with 
the management of registry-offices for servants, that 
he can at first only ejaculate, “ You ! ” but then his 
inveterate courtesy making him fear he has received 
her overture ungratefully, he adds, “ It is very kind 
of you, though I could not think of troubling you ; 
but, of course, you are only joking ! ” 

She looked as unaffectedly astonished at this re- 
ception of her proposal as he had been at the pro- 
posal itself. 

“ What should I be joking for ? Oh, you think 
I do not know how to do the domestic act ! Why, 
I brought up five little brothers ; and as to cooking, 
I have been giving Mrs. Chubb, my landlady, seven 
easy lessons in the use of the salt-box ! ” 

He is afresh puzzled by this allusion to the singu- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


69 


hr transatlantic belief that we use no salt in our 
cooking; but before lie can speak again, Billy, 
having finished his muffin, indicates by a wriggling 
movement of his knickerbockered body his wish to 
descend from his high perch She lifts him down, 
and as if conscious of having been neglecting the 
original object of her hospitality, looks round the 
room in search of some amusement for him, and 
finds it in a slim canary, walking leisurely about the 
floor, and occasionally giving a vicious peck at one 
of the tacks in the carpet. 

“ He has not gotten any of them out yet, but he 
is not a bit discouraged — poor Teddy ! ” says Teddy’s 
mistress cheerfully. “ His theory is that they are 
just holding on tight, and if he can catch them when 
they are not expecting him, he will get ahead of 
them yet! He pretends lie’s just bowed down 
with cares about other things, and, all in a flash, 
he whips round and gives them an awful peck, and 
can’t in the least understand why they are always 
ready ! ” 

The little boy listens to this ingenious anecdote 
with a preoccupied air that shows the bird has sug- 
gested other thoughts to him. 

(< The woman at the bird-shop,” he says, “ has 
got her face all on one side ; her mouth is all crooked. 


70 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


I wisli my face was all on one side ! ” At the 
strangely unexpected turn thus given by his son to the 
conversation, Billy’s father laughs out loud ; but no 
sooner does the sound of his merriment break on his 
ears, than he rises with a horrified feeling to his 
feet, and says : 

“ I am afraid I must be going ; Billy and I have 
been trespassing too long upon your hospitality.” 
He holds out his hand courteously but hurriedly too, 
as if in haste to be gone. 

“ Good-by ! ” cries she in her penetrating voice 
as she leaves her hand in his for a moment, with 
unfettered friendliness ; “ and remember that is not 
one of my little American jokes about the nurse. If 
you’ll make up your mind to curse and cast out 
this one, I’ll engage to find you another that shall 
be a real cherub in a cap ! ” As her back is turned 
to the door while making this extremely handsome 
offer, she fails to perceive that it is overheard by 
the subject of it, who, ushered in by the maid of 
the house as “ Master Lygon’s nurse,” now appears 
on the threshold. 

The undisguised stupefaction in her eye at find- 
ing her so recently widowed master at a tea-party, 
heightens still further his own feeling of horror at 
the lese-douleur (to invent a phrase) into which he 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


71 


has been betrayed. He bnrries away, while bis 
hostess, perfectly callous under the enraged glances 
of the lady she has volunteered to supplant, presses 
kisses and candies on the departing Billy, who tol- 
erates the first as a disagreeable but necessary pre- 
lude to the second. 


CHAPTER YI. 


Edwaed knows that the blow he has been appre- 
hending with regard to Susan has fallen when, on 
the evening of the same day, after dinner, at his 
father-in-law’s house, she lures him, by some not 
very clever pretext, into the old school-room. This 
is in order to be out of hearing of the poor professor, 
who — Susan’s effort to take her sister’s place at his 
game of backgammon having proved a disastrous 
failure — now nightly courts the after-dinner nap 
which he used to make such a gallant stand against. 
Edward knows that she has led him into the school- 
room to tell him something, and that it would be 
kind to help her by a leading question or two, but 
he puts none such. He stands before the fire, star- 
ing at a little portrait of Anne that hangs over the 
mantelpiece, a poor, simpering thing, but yet with a 
strong look of her. 

“I hope they will let me take that with me 
when I go ! ” This is how Susan begins, following 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 73 

the direction of his eyes, and in an uncertain, nerv- 
ous voice. 

“ When you go ? ” 

“ Yes,” with an uneasy laugh. “ I suppose I 
shall go some time or other ; most people go some 
time or other. Oh, Edward ! ” with an irrepress- 
ible burst of happy excitement, “ when you refused 
to let me walk with you to-day, did you know, did 
you foresee ? I had not an idea that it was coming 
so soon ? ” She covers her flushing face with her 
healthy pink hands and there is a silence. He had 
known what was coming, and Susan’s company is, 
after all, as little able to fill the gap in his life as 
would be a sheet of paper to stanch the wound 
made in a ship’s side by a great rock. But yet 
how it hurts ! The last bit of Anne gone from 
him ! 

“ So you are going to follow the baggage-wag- 
on ! ” he says not unkindly, and not unkindly he 
stoops and kisses the very small bit of rosy face left 
unshielded by her hands. 

Either his tone or his kiss makes her cry a little, 
and she bursts out into hysterically eager explana- 
tions that it is not to be for a long time yet, not 
until he has been through the Staff College; and 
with yet more eager protestations, that it will not 


74 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


make the least difference, oh never, never the least 
bit of difference, between her and Edward. 

We have all in our day heard these protestations 
with regard to some arrangement that is to turn 
our lives topsy-turvy ; have been told of these “ in- 
laws” who are to double our joys, instead of rob- 
bing us of them. We know the value of these 
asseverations, and Edward also knows them, but he 
does not dash the new bliss of the genuinely dis- 
tressed girl by telling her so. And to do her jus- 
tice, under the first stress of her compunction and 
affectionate pity for him, she tries hard to be true to 
her promises. But it is no easy matter even for a 
more spacious and comprehensive nature than that 
owned by the good but limited Susan, to combine 
and satisfy two sets of jarring claims upon her heart 
and time ; and as the days go by, the strain to per- 
form the impossible is gradually relaxed, the “ jolly, 
thriving wooer ” comes more and more to the front, 
and the dismal brother-in-law goes more and more 
to the wall. 

By and by, the latter absents himself for three 
nights running from the Barnharts 5 dinner-table 
without his absence being remarked upon or appar- 
ently perceived. He can not bear to dine in College 
instead, as would seem most natural. He is not yet 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


75 


braced for social meetings with mere acquaintances, 
and intimate friends among men he has none. His 
sickly boyhood, making a public school impossible, 
has rendered him shy of his fellows. So he dines 
at home on such unpunctual charred mutton or pink 
beef as his cordon bleu has leisure to make ready 
for him in the intervals of trimming a hat or flirting 
with the milkman. 

If Edward has had no intimate men friends, 
neither has Anne had any bosom-friends among her 
own sex. Oxford society does not lend itself to the 
making of many close friendships, and neither he 
nor she has had anything but general good-will to 
spare for aught beyond the warm and narrow compass 
of tiny No. 107, Holywell. He has therefore no sym- 
pathetic, intimate woman with whom he can bewail 
her. Is there then now no living soul with whom 
he can talk of her ? Must she be wholly locked up in 
his own aching heart ? No living soul ? Yes, 
strangely enough, there is one, the least known and 
least expected of all his female acquaintances, with 
whom he presently finds himself beguiled into free 
converse about his sacred dead. That unlooked- 
for comrade is the odd American girl over the 
wall. 

On leaving her lodgings so hastily, shocked at 


76 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


himself for having entered them, he has had no 
intention of pursuing one step further his acquaint- 
ance with her. But when a person lives next door 
to you ; when that person, from a vantage-ground 
built by herself, has the power of surveying you 
over your joint wall, as you pace pensively your 
garden-walk at sundown ; when that person piles 
toys and candies high as Mount Ararat upon your 
children ; when, meeting you in the street, she stops 
you with unhesitating confidence in your friendli- 
ness, to put questions to you, which you are perfect- 
ly qualified to answer, about this college and that 
library, a resolution to have nothing to say to her is 
more easily made than kept. Before long he gives 
up the effort to keep it, and, if their paths happen 
to lie in the same direction, walks by her side down 
street or lane. 

From the first she has mentioned his wife unhesi- 
tatingly to him, and though this has originally given 
him a painful start, as of an electric shock, yet very 
shortly he finds himself hungrily recurring and re- 
curring to her account of the meeting between her- 
self and his wife. He has made her repeat over and 
over again each trivial word uttered by Anne, and 
with unwearied iteration has led up to the girl’s 
ardent expressions of admiration for the dead worn- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 77 

an. He is never tired of hearing the “just the 
loveliest thing I ever saw.” 

They do not always talk of Anne either. She 
has repeated her offers — offers of so innocent a 
friendliness, so unsuspecting of the possibility of 
any wrong construction, of a straightening out his 
matters for him,” that he drifts into the habit of 
making her more and more the confidante of his 
home discomforts. On reflection he can not quite 
remember how it has happened that he has shown 
her his Bursary, and been burst in upon again by 
the beefy undergraduate with two new slugs in his 
cauliflower. He can not put a name to the exact day 
on which he has acquired the knowledge of various 
facts in her history, with a free selection from her 
opinions, such as that her “ given name,” as she calls 
it, Georgia, is borrowed from her native State ; also 
how far superior she holds Georgian liberty to 
British conventionality ; how extremely beautiful 
she considers English men, and how astonishingly 
stupid English woman, etc., etc. 

And meanwhile the spring advances with uncer- 
tain steps, sometimes lagging and looking back over 
her shoulder at winter, sometimes taking little fitful 
runs forward, with arms outstretched toward J une. 
The summer term is in full swing; that summer 


Y8 A WIDOWER INDEED. 

term which is the despair of College tutors, and up- 
on which in after-life many a man will look back as 
upon the fairest spot of his earthly pilgrimage ; that 
term when the milky thorns, as in Shakespeare’s 
day, make 

u A white sheet bleaching on the hedge ; ” 

when the plash of dipped oars never ceases through 
the long afternoons ; and when to many a happy 
lad Oxford’s two “dear little rivers,” as MissWrenn 
disrespectfully calls them, are the Hiddekel and 
Gihon that girdle Paradise. 

It is the “ Eights ” 'week, when Randolph and 
Clarendon and Mitre are all overflowing with 
guests ; when the mothers and sisters have come up 
in might; and when the cold lambs succeed each 
other uninterruptedly on the undergraduates’ hos- 
pitable luncheon-tables. To none, be he skilled 
oarsman or first-rate cricketer, does the summer 
term bring a larger modicum of enjoyment than to 
Miss Georgia Wrenn. Her excellent health, her 
pungent curiosity, and her untrammeled freedom, 
even without the important factor of her pretty face, 
would have enabled her to manufacture a “good 
time ” for herself out of such abundant materials. 

Her friends, the Brents, have returned to 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


79 


Oxford, but she lias declined to resume her place 
under their wing, preferring her wainscoted, raft- 
ered “ parlor,” to which youths, concerning whom 
she never inquires whether they are gilded or un- 
gilded, throng like flies to a honey-pot. Whatever 
of eccentric there may be in her way of life is 
regarded, even by Oxford public opinion, with that 
leniency which we reserve for oddnesses that have 
the sanction of the Stars and Stripes. But amid the 
press of all her pleasures, Georgia is still not un- 
mindful of her neighbor, and certainly never has he 
needed what faint solace her sympathy can yield 
him, more than now. 

At each step of the year he seems to step deeper 
and deeper into the bottomless morass of his endless 
sorrow. There is not a branch of hawthorne that 
does not seem to smite him across the heart with the 
memory of last year’s May ; no day that is not the 
cruel anniversary of some little dead joy, of some 
simple walk or placid evening row which his inno- 
cent-hearted wife, whom it took so little to amuse, 
turned into a festival. 

It is a day in May ; and latish in the afternoon, 
when he is standing, by the side of the Southern 
girl, in Exeter garden. She met him just now in 
Turl Street, and captured him to be her companion 


80 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


in visiting the Burne Jones and Morris tapestries just 
put up in Exeter Chapel. She has done so partly 
because she wishes for his society, partly because 
she thinks that he looks even more dejected than 
usual, and that the tonic of her conversation will be 
good for him. If he is a shade more cast down 
than is his wont, it is due to the slight accident of 
his having crossed the path of his children, while 
leaving the cemetery at the end of one of his bi- 
daily visits as they were entering it. They do not 
see him, being too much absorbed in a warm discus- 
sion with their nursemaid. The subject of that dis- 
cussion he gathers from her answer to their urgen- 
cies, — 

“ Ho, dears ; go to mother’s grave first, and the 
circus afterward ! ” It is clear that they have been 
proposing a reversal of the order of the two visits. 

From the chapel Edward and Georgia have 
passed into that delicate bit of garden scenery which 
the Exeter fellows call their own. A plat of perfect 
fine grass, set round on three sides by somber build- 
ings, is faced by a range of College rooms, over 
whose front the gigantic fig-trees of which Exeter is 
so proud are flourishing. On the quad’s left side 
stretches the sober majesty of the Divinity Hall, 
whose birth saw the first Tudor king, advancing its 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


81 


deep and dusky buttresses, hugging their cloak of 
ivy to them, far on to the neat and vivid turf. 

Along the gravel path which runs past this Hall 
the young people pace, to an artificial rising in the 
ground which ends the garden, and on which a huge 
old horse-chestnut tree stands. How did a tree that 
looks almost coeval with the hills, ever come to grow 
out of what is so patently man’s handiwork ? One 
wonders how it is that its mighty roots have not 
displaced the stones of the wall above which it 
grows. Beneath its shade Edward and Georgia 
stand leaning on that wall, their eyes looking down 
at the few passers-by in Brasenose Lane, and plung- 
ing into Bishop Heber’s window in the closely 
opposite college of the same name. Miss Wrenn 
has been recounting her experiences in a canoe with 
a youth who had undertaken to paddle her up to 
Iffley, to see the start of the eights. 

“ I do not understand your Englishmen ! ” she is 
saying with a dispassionate astonishment ; “ they 
never say nice things to one, and if one says any- 
thing nice to them, about their looks or anything, 
they do not like it, they get up and go away at 
once.” 

“ But in this case he could not go away,” replies 

Edward, with a slight smile that shows a surface 
6 


82 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


amusement playing on the deep sadness of his 
face. 

“ If an Englishman comes to tea with you, un- 
less you throw the tea-kettle at him, he thinks that 
you are trying to make up to him.” 

“ You seem to have been a little unlucky in your 
experiences ! ” 

“ And they will not let you amuse them either,” 
with the same composed disapproval. “ I met one 
the other day at Nuneham, and I did my very best ; 
I said to myself, ‘Nowl will make a conquest of 
him,’ and after I had been telling him my best 
stories, my very best, which I usually keep in pink 
cotton — and I know they are good, for I have tried 
their effect on former occasions — he never laughed 
at all, but at the end he just said, £ I have a sense of 
humor too — an extremely strong sense, but I do 
not see any good in putting it into words ! ’ ” She 
narrates this anecdote with a gravity not inferior 
to that of the Britisher against whom she is bring- 
ing her complaints ; but Edward laughs again, his 
look idly resting on the dead Bishop’s casement 
opposite, brushed against by the branchy arm of the 
great green giant that has been named after him. 

“ I met an American man this morning,” pursues 
she, “ and I literally fell on his neck. I said, ‘ Say 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


83 


some nice things to me! I am literally starving/ 
so he just turned a Hudson’s River of nice things 
on to me. Ah ! there’s your sister-in-law ! Some 
one is turning a Hudson’s River of nice things on to 
her too ! ” 

Edward starts, and turns to see Susan and her 
Mandeville walking toward him, along the path 
lately followed by himself and Georgia. At the 
same instant he is recognized by Miss Lambart, and 
the look of pink happiness that had been shining on 
her face gives way to an expression of great and not 
pleasant surprise. 

“ I could not believe it was you ! ” says she as 
she reaches him, forgetting for the first moment or 
two the bow that her slight yet definite acquaintance 
with his companion requires. The shape taken by 
her sentence disturbs him. 

“ Could not you ? ” 

“ I thought that at this time of the day you were 
always taking a long walk by — ” She stops short. 
“By yourself ” she is going to say, but breaks off 
with a feeling that there may be something disoblig- 
ing in the phrase for Miss Wrenn, who stands near 
observing Mr. Mandeville’s short hair and well-knit 
figure with the calm enthusiasm of a connoisseur 
over the Hermes or the Disk-thrower. 


8 4 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


The strong tinge of reproach in Susan’s voice 
strikes him silent with a surprise to the full as dis- 
agreeable as had been hers. 

“ Why do you never come to see us now ? ” con- 
tinues she, still with that inflection of injury. “ You 
have not dined with us for — ” Susan seems fated 
never to finish a sentence to-day. It is patent that 
the reason why she again stops short, is that until 
this moment his absence has been so little noticed 
by her that she is unable to remember its extent. 
She hurries to begin a new question. “ Do you 
mean to drop us altogether ? ” 

“ Drop you ! ” repeats he with that slightly sar- 
castic intonation which Susan’s conversation seldom 
fails to produce in him. “ My dear girl, did you 
ever happen to hear a proverb about ‘ putting the 
saddle on the wrong horse ’ ? ” 

They are virtually alone by this time ; Georgia, 
having finished her cool, pleased survey of the young 
soldier, has discreetly sauntered a few steps out of 
earshot; and Mandeville, recognizing an acquaint- 
ance among a group of persons sitting beneath the 
large acacia in the middle of the garden, goes to 
speak to him. Yet Susan lowers her voice, “I 
thought that you did not like Americans ? ” 

“ No more I do ! ” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


85 


“She is very American.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I do not think I have ever heard a stronger 
accent.” 

“ No?” 

“And yet” — (with the persistence of a dull 
woman hammering on at an unwelcome theme) — 
“ and yet you like her ! ” 

“ Like her ! ” repeats he wearily and sorely ; u I 
do not like anything or anybody on the face of the 
earth ! ” 


CHAPTER VII. 


Commemoration has come, and the river of vis- 
itors to Oxford, which has flowed with ever-swelling 
current since the Eights, has reached its highest 
flood in that mid- June week which, riotously gay, 
winds up the joys of the Summer Term. 

The stale old festivities, that yet come so fresh 
to many a young partaker in them, have been danced 
and eaten through. St. John’s all-delightful garden 
has seen one more generation of Freemasons mum- 
ming on its lawns ; there having been no recent 
deaths among crowned heads — Christchurch always 
takes royal deaths personally — that College has given 
a very smart ball ; and on the day of the Encoenia a 
string of semi-illustrious elderly gentlemen — (there 
have been one or two rather questionable glories 
among the D. C. L.’s this year) — has walked up the 
Sheldonian, been shaken hands with by the Vice- 
Chancellor, and sat down in glory on his right 
hand. 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


87 


It is a matter of course that, owing to its mourn- 
ing, in none of these gayeties does the Lambart fami- 
ly take any part. It leaves Oxford, indeed, to avoid 
them. In Anne’s lifetime they had always had a 
large young party for Commemoration; and even 
this year how many pleasant contrivances had she 
and Susan planned for cramming the little house at 
Holywell with such guests as overflowed from the 
larger one. 

Edward would be very, very thankful to leave 
Oxford too ; but the fact that this year his College 
has seen fit to build itself a new wing, detains him, 
against his will, in the jarringly merry town. Un- 
like the Lambarts, from not one of the functions I 
have mentioned, nor from many more besides, has 
Miss Georgia Wrenn been absent. She has there- 
fore naturally had less time to bestow upon her 
melancholy neighbor. Yet she can not be said to 
have neglected him. There are many moments per- 
dus , in even the busiest day, which an active minded 
and bodied person can find to bestow on one who is 
parted from her merely by a wall, and into whose 
house she has given herself leave to run whenever 
she feels disposed to visit his children. She has 
found leisure to do him what she considers the sig- 
nal service of ousting his nurse, and supplying her 


88 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


place with a treasure provided by herself, with the 
aid of her friend, Mrs. Brent ; a treasure who indeed 
looks well after their rosy bodies, but who spoils 
them, till their warmest admirer, Mr. Mandeville, has 
to own that they are fast growing intolerable. Ed- 
ward is not conscious of missing his odd friend’s so- 
ciety, when Commemoration comes to slacken though 
not extinguish her attentions. In his immense un- 
happiness there can not be a more or less. And yet 
it seems to grow to huger dimensions than before, 
in this week of unfeeling, unescapable jollity. Even 
here, in his own little street, does not that jollity 
pursue him with the anguish of its anniversaries ? 

Exactly opposite to 107 are lodgings let out for 
the week to a party of ladies, young and old ; ladies 
who are always lunching with undergraduates in 
the bow- window, or being walked down the street 
in white frocks by attentive admirers. Last year 
those lodgings were occupied by some friends of 
Anne’s, and there was a continual hilarious inter- 
change of civilities between the two little houses ; a 
tripping across the street in evening gowns ; a shout- 
ing of jokes from window to window ; a buzz and 
carol of talk and song round Anne’s cottage piano 
in Anne’s drawing-room. That once joyous little 
room never expects any visitors now ; and yet one 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


89 


day it receives two — two unmistakable “ ladies from 
London,” whose delightful clothes inspire Eliza, 
when she admits them, with an admiration that the 
indigenous Oxford costume is, to say the least, un- 
likely to inspire. 

Although told that Edward is out, they insist on 
entering, announcing their intention of awaiting his 
return, and adding that Mr. Lygon will certainly not 
mind, as they are relations of his. The elder of the 
two ladies is the spokeswoman, and she plies Eliza 
with questions all the way up the humble oak- wain- 
scoted staircase ; questions about her master, about 
the children, their age and sex, etc., which evidence 
that though she may be a kinswoman, she has not 
much acquaintance with the objects of her in- 
quiries. 

Eliza leaves them to their own devices in the 
drawing-room, which in Anne’s day had been a very 
lovable room, and had pleased all those who entered 
it, though few of its modest ornaments were worth 
twopence-half penny. Now it has a lifeless and sor- 
did air : the curtains are dragged back like hair 
from an ugly face, and hang in slovenly folds ; 
there is a terrible decoration of cut paper in the 
fireplace, and the ferns in the jardinieres look yel- 
low and sick. The visitors have plenty of time be' 


90 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


fore their host’s return to examine every detail of 
the sad, even though sunny room. 

“ The dear departed, I suppose ? ” says the 
younger, though not very young lady, standing 
opposite a duplicate of the portrait of Anne that 
hangs in the Lambart’s school-room. 

“ What dreadful possibilities there are in modern 
pastels ! ” adds the mother, surveying the picture 
through her eyeglass ; “ but she must have been a 
good-looking woman.” 

“ Hem ! ” rejoins the daughter doubtfully ; 
“ hardly enough to account for such a very broken 
heart as by all accounts his is. I suppose he really 
is very much cut up.” 

“ You had better console him,” suggests her 
parent, laughing. ♦'* 

“ And live in Holywell ? ” — (with a contemptu- 
ous glance that includes street and house) — “no, 
thank you ! ” 

“ You would not have to live in Holywell; of 
course, when his uncle dies, you do not suppose he 
will stay in this wretched bauge ! ” 

“ I dare say his uncle will not leave him his 
money after all : people never do when they are ex- 
pected.” 

“ Nonsense! He has no choice ; he can not help 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 91 

it. I saw the grandfather’s will myself at Doctors’ 
Commons.” 

“ I should say,” rejoins the girl, dropping the 
point contested, “ that living in Holywell ” — (with a 
sneering emphasis on the name) — “ was not a very 
good preparation for coming into a large fortune. 
"When he gets his money, he will not know how to 
spend it.” 

“You will show him the way ” — (laughing again) 
— “ I can answer for your competency.” 

“ It is worth thinking of,” replies the daughter 
coolly ; then returning to her contemplation of 
Anne’s portrait, she adds, “ There can he no ques- 
tion that my first action on becoming Ho. 2 will be 
to dismount Ho. 1 and transplant her to the attic.” 
The mother has moved to the window, and is watch- 
ing the large and merry party at tea in the lodgings 
over the way. 

“ This is not a house which one would choose to 
commit a crime or even an indiscretion in,” says she. 
“We can see everything that they do, and they can 
see everything that we do ! ” Then, with a change 
of key and lowering of voice, for the window is 
open, “ There is some one at the door — I think it 
must be he ! Did you ever see anything so lugu- 
brious ? and how unnecessarily black this hot day ! ” 


92 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


“ What a disastrous coat ! ” says the girl, joining 
her mother at her post of observation. “ One would 
have thought that in a place where there are so 
many men, there must be a decent tailor ; but he is 
quite nice-looking ! ” 

The emotions of Mr. Lygon on hearing that 
there are two ladies who came about three quarters 
of an hour ago, and concerning whom Eliza was to 
please to say that they were cousins of his, and that 
they would wait till he came in, are scarcely pleasant 
ones. He is not conscious of the possession of one 
relative in the world whom it would give him any 
satisfaction to see. In his sickly childhood he has 
had little intercourse with any of his connections, 
and has only vague recollections of various families 
of little known and less cared-for cousins of different 
degrees of nearness. To which of these families the 
two ladies — who are so much more anxious to claim 
his kinship than he is to avail himself of theirs — be- 
long, he is quite in the dark. He does not long re- 
main so when once he has made his entry. 

“ Will you forgive us for taking possession of 
your house ? ” asks the older of the two strangers, 
turning a face with a chastened smile upon it — a 
sort of half -mourning smile— and holding out a very 
nicely gloved hand toward him. “ We did not like 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


93 


to miss you, and we are paying only a flying visit to 
Oxford ; and it is so long since we met ! ” She 
pauses, but the hopelessly puzzled expression of her 
auditor’s face, which his politeness in vain tries to 
conceal, warns her that she must be more explicit. 
“ You are not very clear about your invaders ! ” she 
cries with a little laugh ; while the younger woman, 
with genuine amusement in her attractively low 
voice, adds, — 

“ You have not the faintest idea who we are ! — 
how should you ? ” 

“Have you quite forgotten,” resumes the first 
speaker, “ an old cousin called Louisa Crichton, and 
a very little cousin called Albertina ? She is not very 
little now,” with a satisfied glance at her daughter’s 
towering stature. “ I do not know what has hap- 
pened to the girls of to-day, they are all such giant- 
esses ! ” 

Edward still hesitates. Out of the night of time 
indeed there is surging up to his mind’s eye a twenty 
years’ younger version of one of the faces before 
him, the elder one ; but his memory refuses to re- 
store a “ very little ” Albertina. It yields instead a 
biggish girl-cousin, several years his senior, who 
tweaked his hair and slapped him as opportunity 
offered, in some pre-historic period. 


94 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


“ I remember you ; yes, certainly I remember 
you,” he answers at last, courteously turning from 
one to the other, distressed at what seems to him 
his own churlishness, his own tardiness in meeting 
their kindly overtures. “ You must forgive me for 
not recognizing you at the first moment, but it is a 
very long time ago ! ” He stops, sucked back into 
the gulf of his own grief by the thought that in the 
twenty years bridged over by these simpering women 
lies contained the whole of Anne’s and his love — 
and — death — history. 

“ I am afraid we should not have recognized you 
either, for the matter of that,” rejoins Mrs. Crichton, 
inwardly entertained at the old-world politeness of 
his manner of making his apology. “ You were a 
little fragile child when last we parted, a little fragile 
child with hair like floss silk, and the thinnest legs 
and arms.” 

“ What friends you and I used to be ! ” says 
Albertina, contributing her mite of reminiscence. 
“ Do you remember they used to call us ‘ the insepa- 
rables ’ ? ” 

Mr. Lygon smiles vaguely, thinking what a tricky 
thing memory is, and how different an impression 
that commerce which seems to him to have con- 
sisted wholly of smacks on one side and tears on the 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


95 


other, appears to have made on the mind of the 
young lady from what it had done on his own. 

“ We have been looking at all your pretty things,” 
says Mrs. Crichton, adroitly changing the topic, since 
the river of recollection does not seem to roll much 
gold among its sand. Her eye rests accidentally on 
the wretched pastel of Anne as she speaks. She is 
quite innocent of an intention of putting any in- 
quiry about it, both because it would be ill-bred and 
because she is perfectly aware who it is that it repre- 
sents. But Edward is seized with a sudden terror 
that she is going to ask who it is, and may add per- 
haps some jocose comment upon the poor smouch, of 
whose valuelessness as a work of art he is perfectly 
aware. He therefore asks them precipitately wheth- 
er they would not like to see the garden, and as they 
express a civil pleasure at the proposition, into the 
garden they descend. 

The garden is a straight strip between two gray 
walls ; walls so old that the snails find many a com- 
fortable crevice to winter in, and on whose licliened 
tops little wallflowers and tiny creepers grow as if 
they were those of a ruined castle. Above its nar- 
row enceinte the jackdaws fly and comfortably talk 
round Hew College’s towered belfry, which shakes 
out its grave music every quarter of an hour over 


96 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


the huddling gables and uneven roofs of the shabby, 
ancient streetlet. 

They walk to the end of the little parterre, be- 
tween two long borders of mixed flowers, under an 
arch of tea-roses, past an asparagus bed and some 
gooseberry bushes to where a faded green door with 
a big bunch of ivy hanging over it closes the do • 
main. Then they walk back again. 

“ There is not much to see,” says Edward, with 
an apologetic smile for the humility of his estate. 

“ I think there is a great deal, on the contrary,” 
replies Mrs. Crichton politely. “ You have a little 
of everything. What a long way these gardens run 
back, and how delightful to be so perfectly private 
and unoverlooked ! ” 

“ How good your pinks smell ! ” cries Albertina 
with a determination to admire something. 

“ I dare say if you ask prettily, Edward will give 
you some.” 

“ Oh, certainly,” replies he with eager compunc- 
tion at not having thought of the attention before, 
stooping as he speaks to pluck handfuls of the home- 
ly sweetnesses. “ Please gather whatever you feel 
inclined ; I did not know that there was anything 
worth offering you.” 

“ And what a quantity of birds you have ! ” pur- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


97 


sues Albertina, still gallantly searching for some- 
thing to commend. “ I did not know that anything 
but sparrows lived in a town.” 

“ There is a blackbird in Carlton Gardens this 
year,” says Mrs. Crichton. “ Only the other day 
Lady Belton was telling me that she and Lord 
Belton had to change their bedroom from the front 
to the back of the house because it sang so loudly in 
the mornings that it woke them up at six o’clock ; ” 
then, returning to the rather sterile theme of their 
joint reminiscences, “ Do you remember what a per- 
fect passion for birds Albertina had as a tiny 
child ? ” 

Once again Edward’s memory protests against 
the implication of his infancy having been coinci- 
dent with Albertina’s, nor does it furnish any facts 
in connection with her devotion to the feathered 
tribes beyond a hazy picture of a very naughty, 
oldish little girl bawling because she was not allowed 
to pull out the tail of his mother’s cockatoo. He 
can only look rather stupid, and say evasively and 
flatly that he had met but one person in all his life 
who did not like birds. 

“ If you were a clergyman,” says Mrs. Crichton, 
giving up the attempt to provoke reminiscences that 

decline to rise to the surface, and glancing with 
7 


98 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


warm approbation at a rather dilapidated, brush- 
wood-roofed summer-house, “no doubt you would 
write your sermons in that pretty arbor — how per- 
fectly undisturbed you could be ! What I like best 
of all about you is your perfect soli — ” She breaks 
off with the word as unfinished as was the apostrophe 
of Bombastes’ dying friend, and changes the final 
syllable for an “ Oh ! ” of most unaffected astonish- 
ment. The cause of her self -interruption lies in the 
comment made upon her encomiums of Mr. Lygon’s 
privacy by the rising of a very pretty and perfectly 
grave young female face composedly above the gar- 
den wall. It rears itself slowly to such a height as 
will permit of its elbows resting upon the worn gray 
stone that separates Mr. Lygon’s territory from that 
of 106. On catching sight of the two smart female 
figures where she had expected only one lugubrious 
male, her serene eyes unbutton a little in mild sur- 
prise. 

“ Oh, Mr. Lygon, I’ve just looked over the wall 
to tell you I shall not want you to take me to 
Water Eaton after all.” Then, with a polite diver- 
sion of the stream of her talk in the direction of the 
strangers, “I beg your pardon, but I’ve got this 
matter to settle with Mr. Lygon right away.” 

They both stare, Albertina pausing in her senti- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


99 


mental occupation of fastening three of Edward’s 
sops-in-wine with an ingenious diamond penguin in 
the front of her muslin gown ; while Georgia con- 
tinues, turning her remarks back into their natural 
channel, that is, toward Edward : 

“ The Brents asked me to go, and I could not 
wait for you. We had a perfectly angelic time! 
It was so sort of Mysteries of Udolpho-y, finding the 
priest’s chamber in the wall ; and oh ! did you get 
the beautiful poem we sent down the river in a 
bottle to you % We wrote it on the bank while we 
were having tea. As old what’s-his-name says, 
6 When I slop over in poetry, I kin knock out old 
Shakespeare cold dead ! ’ ” It is probable that in 
this quotation the fair Georgia emphasizes her nat- 
ural peculiarities more than she would otherwise 
have done, from a malicious pleasure in outraging 
the susceptibilities of the Britons, whom she in- 
stinctively divines to be hostile. 

An uncomfortable feeling of incongruity makes 
Edward feel shyer than he has already done, and he 
says, baldly, “ I am glad you enjoyed yourself.” 

“Well, as to that, you know that I manage to 
pleasure myself on most occasions; but do not de- 
lude yourself with the idea that you have slipped 
out of my little American lasso, for all that ! I’ve 


100 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


only changed the name. It will be Bablock Hythe 
instead. I read about it last night in the i Scholar 
Gypsey,’ and we’ll take Billy and Nanny, and 

‘Cross the stripling Thames at Bablock Hythe,’ 

as Matthew Arnold says.” 

“ Billy and Nanny ! ” repeats Albertina, laugh- 
ing ; “ do you keep goats , Edward ? ” 

u They are my children.” 

The two ladies’ faces instantly fall into a sympa- 
thetic shape. “ Where are they ? may we not see 
them ? ” 

“ Have not you seen them ? ” asks Georgia over 
the wall, with her sociable air ; “ well, you are out of 
it ! You might ravage this enormous country of 
yours right through and not find their match.” 

This fleer at the size of their native land is 
received by both Englishwomen in a silence which is 
not exchanged for an ireful retort only for Dr. 
Johnson’s reason, “ Because I had nothing ready, 
Sir ! ” 

“ Well, I can not stay loafing round with you all 
any longer,” continues Georgia with an ingenious 
implied perversion of facts, since the “ loafing 
round ” on her part has been perfectly uninvited by 
the objects of it. As she speaks, the cheerfully im- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


101 


pertinent face and the delicate bust and arms dis- 
appear behind the wall, leaving in their wake a 
silence which can hardly be said to be one of appro- 
bation. Mrs. Crichton is the first to break it, — 

“ There is no need to ask the nationality of that 
lady ! ” 

“ She is a Southerner — she comes from Georgia,” 
replies Edward rather hurriedly, with a feeling of 
discomfort at the rencontre. 

u Is she really ? ” — both raise their eyebrows. 
“ I thought that Southerners were always supposed 
to be more like us” 

“ Mamma’s congratulations to you upon your 
seclusion were rather premature,” says Albertina 
with a little low laugh. 

“Does she often do it?” asks Mrs. Crichton 
with a sort of wondering disgust. 

“You need not answer, Edward,” puts in the 
daughter, still laughing delightedly. “ I am sure 
she does ! Only long practice could have made her 
spring up like a Jack-in-the-box ; I believe that 
nothing short of barbed wire would keep her out ! ” 

There is something in the tone of both Mr. Ly- 
gon’s cousins which so entirely takes for granted 
that the apparition over the garden wall must be 
distasteful to him, that loyalty obliges him to stand 


102 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


up for his transatlantic friend, though he has not 
altogether admired her utterances on the present oc- 
casion. 

“ I have every cause to be grateful to her,” he 
says rather reluctantly, but quite firmly. “ She has 
been extraordinarily kind to my children, and she has 
also been of great use to me in some tiresome house- 
hold troubles ; some of those troubles in which ” — 
with a rather forlorn smile — “ a man is so helpless.” 

Seeing him gravely undertaking the defense of 
his odd acquaintance, Albertina becomes grave too ; 
and shortly afterward, to his relief, they take their 
leave, telling him how like old times it feels to see 
him again ; begging him to visit them in London, 
and assuring him that he will always find them in 
the Eed Book. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


The “ Long ” lias begun ; the “ Too Long ” many 
parents of expensive sons are inclined to call it. 
The windows in the hoary colleges, in term time 
flung so high, and with such an array of red cush- 
ions for muscular young elbows to rest on, upon 
their sills, are closed. The river runs abandoned to 
the Scouts, but as callously indifferent to their own 
humiliation as was “ roan Barbary ” to the change 
from his old master to his new. The tale of laden 
cabs passing down George Street to the station, daily 
grows larger ; cabs, the bath-and-perambulator type 
of whose luggage teaches the careful observer that 
lesson, better learned at Oxford than anywhere else, 
how possible it is to be at once learned and prolific. 

But since it is as yet only July, and not August, 
though the place is void of its undergraduate popu- 
lation, there are still many residents left; troops of 
girls and some boys to play tennis on the Club 
ground in the parks ; and an unbroken series of gar- 


104 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


den parties on the rain-freshened sward appertaining 
to Presidents’ and Principals’ and Hectors’ lodgings, 
and in the humbler grounds of fire-new villas and 
villakins. Lastly, to insure the ancient city against 
feeling lonely in the absence of its boys, the Uni- 
versity Extension Association has let loose on its 
streets and quads a flood of strangely garmented 
females, who are to be met at every turn star- 
ing up through large spectacles at its gables and 
oriels. 

Miss Georgia Wrenn is among the persons who 
have not fled, since as yet she has by no means 
appeased her patronizing but also sincerely admir- 
ing curiosity as to what is behind all the queer 
little doors in the old walls. She has taken Mr. Ly- 
gon’s children upon several expeditions, and himself 
upon more than one. The most important of these 
is that excursion to Bablock Hythe, which occupies 
the greater part of a day, and of which she had 
thrown the rough sketch to him across their divid- 
ing wall, under the noses of his visitors. Edward 
had faintly suggested the addition of the Brents to 
the party. But as Georgia does not seem to think 
this at all necessary, nor indeed much disguises her 
opinion that it would detract from her own enjoy- 
ment, he does not insist, and the little trip is made 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


105 


with no more chaperonage than that of Billy and 
Nanny. 

The day is not altogether a success. It comes 
on to rain dismally, when they are too far on their 
voyage to return. They have to eat their damp 
sandwiches under the shelter of some willows, which 
stoop so low as to brush off Billy’s hat into the 
stream ; on whose troubled heart the images of the 
loosestrifes on the bank lie in purple blurs. Miss 
Wrenn tries to remedy Billy’s misfortune by tying 
a striped silk handkerchief of her own about his 
round curly head, an attention which he resents, and 
at the same time displays the energy of his character 
by at once tearing it off and throwing it into the 
river after his own head-gear. Then there comes 
on a sudden heavy thunderstorm, when the young 
Thames seems to leap up to meet the great drops 
of the lashing rain ; and Nanny is frightened and 
bellows, and hits her father a blow on the nose with 
her doubled-up fist when he tries to console her; 
and lastly they all land in the degradation of utter 
clinging drippingness, and take their way home 
across Port Meadow. Even Georgia seems to feel 
the pressure of circumstances too strong for her; 
but she makes an effort at once to regain her cheer- 
fulness and to restore to some sort of order the 


106 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


ropes of lier hair, whose pretty, hut somewhat fan- 
tastic edifice, the hurricane that brought on the del- 
uge has laid low. 

44 I have a friend in New York,” she begins, with 
a gallant attempt at a laugh, “ who said to me be- 
fore I came over, 4 Now, Georgia, do not you try 
any of your queer ways of fixing your hair when 
first you get to England ! Let them get used to you 
first ! ’ I think she would open her eyes if she could 
see me now.” 

44 Why did that man look at you so, Miss 
Wrenn ? ” asks Billy, whose hand Georgia has only 
just loosed, in her futile attempts at hairdressing. 
Billy’s question is put in a shrill, clear voice which 
must have penetrated the ears of the subject of it, a 
thickset young man, who, walking faster than they, 
since their pace must be accommodated to that of the 
children, has just passed them, going up like them- 
selves from the river, passed them with head bent 
and coat-collar turned up. 

44 How can I tell why he looks at me ? I sup- 
pose because he is so knocked over by my beauty ! ” 
returns Georgia gayly ; but Edward is struck with 
an indefinite sense of discomfort in recognizing in 
the passing figure, that ill-conditioned youth belong- 
ing to his own College, who had so often wearied him 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


107 


with complaints of the commissariat, and whom it 
now strikes him, that he has come across more often 
than any other person in the course of his walks 
and strolls with Miss Wrenn. That the young man 
should still be up despite the Vacation having begun, 
is accounted for by the fact that his ill-natured old 
aunt, Mrs. Pennington Bruce, inhabits Oxford. 
The impression, though unpleasant, is only moment- 
ary, and Edward soon forgets having ever felt it, 
though later he has cause to recall it. 

Despite the ill-success of Bablock Hythe, his 
American comrade is far from being daunted in her 
search for entertainment in his company, though 
they never again embark on quite so ambitious an 
undertaking. But she has no sort of scruple in lay- 
ing claim to his time, of which she now supposes 
him to possess a superabundance ; and of asking, or 
even good-humoredly commanding his attendance 
at such sights as are not always accessible to the 
general public, or upon whose history and associa- 
tions he can throw light into her alert and asking 
mind. It is clear that in that paradise of the fair 
sex — her native land — where, if its daughters speak 
true, abject Man crawls on all fours before his 
adored superior, Woman — Miss Wrenn has had no 
experience of mutiny against her will. Edward 


108 


A WIDOWER INDEED 


gives in to her plans, faintly amused at her arbitrary 
ways; heartily grateful to her for that sympathy 
which, in spite of its odd dress, yet comes so plainly 
straight from her warm heart ; for her patience with 
that rooted melancholy of his, which, it seems to 
him, must he so tiresome to all the world ; and for 
her unflagging goodness to his pretty, naughty brats. 
That her society, any more than that of any other 
created being, could give him pleasure, would have 
seemed to him absurd. 

He is experiencing the nearest approach to glad- 
ness of which he is capable one grilling July morn- 
ing as he speeds at a pace grossly unsuitable to the 
temperature of the day up the Parks Koad. He is 
on his way to welcome home his wife’s family, who, 
now that Commemoration is over, have returned to 
their Oxford home for a few weeks previous to tak- 
ing their longer autumn flight. It is even a matter 
of indifference to Edward whether or not the eternal 
Mandeville is in attendance, since it is not the disap- 
pointing Susan, but her much more satisfactory 
mother, whom he is looking forward to meeting. 
Of the consoling company of that dear woman he 
has by circumstances been cruelly deprived almost 
ever since Anne’s death, and it is with a feeling that 
wears almost a face of joy that he is now hurrying 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


109 


to tell her how sorely he has missed her. His hand 
is just lifted to ring the villa bell, when the door 
opens and a lady issues out and on to the sunshiny 
graveled sweep. Edward at once recognizes the 
lady as Mrs. Pennington Bruce ; recognizes her 
with a flash of disagreeable surprise that she should 
be on terms of such intimacy with his mother-in-law 
as to visit her at eleven o’clock in the forenoon. 

Mrs. Pennington Bruce is a burly old woman 
with a voice like a bull, and a fine taste for believ- 
ing the worst of her neighbors. She is the wife of 
a flighty old Professor of Hegelianism, whom 
neither his Professorial Chair nor his Hegelianism 
prevent from gibbering with terror before her, and 
whose social mirth — naturally noisy — she can always 
quench by sending his name “ Pennington ! ” down 
the longest dinner-table in awful admonishment past 
twenty guests to his terrified ear. 

Edward steps aside to let her pass, taking off his 
hat with cold and silent courtesy, while in his mind 
the trifling feeling of annoyance at her presence is 
changed for one of thankfulness that his own visit is 
coincident with the end instead of the beginning of 
hers. Before the butler, whom he has hardly pa- 
tience to allow to announce him, has ushered him 
into the drawing-room, Mrs. Pennington Bruce has 


110 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


disappeared from his mind altogether. He had 
hoped to find Mrs. Lambart alone, and that Susan 
and her irrelevant new happiness should not be 
present to arrest that tide of tender, harrowing remi- 
niscence for which it seems to him that he has been 
for weeks athirst. In the case of Anne’s mother 
there can be no commonplace new bliss to crowd 
ont that holy memory. And his wish is gratified, 
for there is no one to share the solitude of the grace- 
ful black-clad figure, which, with its face averted 
from him, looking out upon the garden sweet- 
williams and larkspurs, and with its usually busy 
hands lying idle in its lap, meets his eagerly looking 
eyes as he enters. In the veranda outside the 
window, an uneducated bullfinch is practicing his 
dear little native small-talk, with no pretensions to a 
tune. 

Edward hurries up the long, narrow, fragrant 
room, toward the seated figure at the end, with an 
affectionate haste not often seen in the pursuit of a 
mother-in-law; that personage who, in company 
with the clergy, the police, and Balaam’s ass, has 
perennially shared the office of butt to the mauvais 
jplaisants of every clime and every century. 

At the sound of his name she gives a kind of 
jump and turns her head from the garden, rising 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Ill 


into a standing posture ; but there is no answering 
hurry to that of his in the feet that remain stock- 
still to await his coming. She is by nature an im- 
pulsive woman, and, in the pictures he had mentally 
painted of their meeting, he had imagined her almost 
running to meet him wdth both hands held out, or 
even throwing pitying, motherly arms round that 
forlorn neck, which for seven years those of her first- 
born had so fondly girdled. It gives him a cold 
douche of disappointment to find her standing stiffly, 
holding out a formal hand — holding it out as coldly as 
she might have done five minutes ago to Mrs. Pen- 
nington Bruce. What has happened ? In her case 
it can not be that any new lover has crowded out 
the sacred past. He looks at her anxiously over the 
unresponsive fingers, which she w r ould like to take 
away from him as soon as given. Ho, whatever 
may be the origin of her altered manner, it certainly 
springs from no pleasurable emotion. Her eyes are 
cloudy with tears, and her face, though wearing an 
unfamiliar sternness, is all quivering. 

“ I thought you were never coming back ! ” 
cries he, his whole sad soul in his look ; and yet 
diffidently, too, at the strange severity of her air. 

Her answer is to say in an uncertain voice, and 
withdrawing her hand from his with a resoluteness 


112 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


which shows how little she likes his guardianship, 
“ I wish I had not come back now ! ” 

The incivility of the retort is so unlike her, so 
out of keeping with her whole character, that he 
stands dumfounded before her, asking himself 
whether sorrow has touched her wits. But in a 
moment a less petrifying explanation suggests itself. 

“You mean,” he says with a relieved air, “that 
this first home-coming without her to welcome you 
is dreadful 1 How stupid of me not to understand 
just at the first moment ! ” But she disclaims his 
explanation with what looks like downright anger. 

“ Ho, no, it is not that ! That is bad enough in 
all conscience ; but it is not that ! ” 

How quite at fault, he stands in dumb disquiet 
before her, having no further hypothesis to offer, 
awaiting the explanation — which surely must be 
coming — of behavior so strange. Yet when Mrs. 
Lambart at length brings herself to speak, she has to 
all appearance entirely changed the subject of con- 
versation. 

“ Mrs. Pennington Bruce has just been here.” 

“ I met her as I came in ; I did not know ” — 
with a recurrence to that annoyed feeling which his 
first view of the big figure and hard, elderly face 
had produced — “ that she was a friend of yours.” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


113 


“A friend ! ” repeats liis mother-in-law, with 
the bitterest laugh he has ever heard issue from her 
genial and mirth-loving lips ; “ she a friend ! ” 

“ I mean,” explains Edward, taken aback by her 
vehemence, a vehemence which seems so out of all 
proportion to the occasion — “ that I did not know 
she was on a footing of such intimacy with you as 
to justify her calling on you at eleven in the morn- 
ing.” 

“ She is not ! ” cries Mrs. Lambart, her wet eyes 
flashing in indignant denial ; “ she is not on a foot- 
ing of any intimacy at all ; I have always taken the 
greatest pains to avoid her, so did darling Anne. 
It was monstrous of her to thrust herself upon me. 
I do not know what Stephens can have been think- 
ing of to admit her ; but no doubt, when he said 
i Not at home,’ she pushed past him.” 

“ She is an objectionable, vulgar-minded old 
woman,” replies Edward, in growing astonishment 
at so needless an outlay of ire ; “ but do not let us 
waste time talking of her ; her visit can not have 
any reference to your reasons for being sorry to 
come back to us, who need you so badly.” He 
utters these last words in a wounded tone, and while 
he is doing so she looks at him penetratingly. 

“ Are you so certain that there is no relation be- 
8 


114 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


tween the two ? ” she asks, exchanging her excited 
tone for a low one, in which the emotion, though 
less on the surface, is more concentrated. 

He smiles derisively. “ Surely not. How 
should there be ? ” 

“ Do you know what she has been telling me ? ” 
(still in that alarming low voice). 

“ How could I know ? ” hopelessly puzzled, and 
yet with the shadow of a vague dread stealing over 
him. 

“ It was odd that she should have crossed you on 
the threshold, since it was of you she was talking to 
me.” 

“ Of me ? ” 

“ Of you.” Then, looking away from him and 
beginning to fidget nervously with the lime-blossom 
and roses in a majolica jug at her elbow, as if it 
were easier to make her communication so — “ She 
said that, as we were such old friends” — with a 
gesture of disgust and denegation — “ she could not 
bear me to hear from any one else what all Oxford 
is talking of.” 

“Yes?” 

“ She said that ‘ it gave her great pain, but that 
she thought it her duty to let me know — ’ ” For a 
minute she can not go on. 




A WIDOWER INDEED. 


115 


“ To let you know wliat ? ” 

“ To let me know that all Oxford is scandalized 
at the way in which, not content with having entire- 
ly forgotten your wife, though she has been dead 
scarcely four months ” — a cruel choking break in 
the voice — “ you outrage her memory by parading 
everywhere your devotion to an American girl, 
whom the Brents had to turn out of their house be- 
cause they could not any longer stand her miscon- 
duct.” (Poor Miss Georgia ! ) This is the color 
which, under Mrs. Pennington Bruce’s fostering 
care, her spirited independence of action in prefer- 
ring a pied-d-terre of her own to the roof of the 
most admiring and regretful of friends, takes. 

Mrs. Lambart has, as I have said, begun her list 
of accusations with averted look ; but as they draw 
to their end, her eyes fix themselves upon Mr. 
Lygon, asking strainingly whether or not there is 
any conscious guilt in the face that, pale to start 
with, is whitening even to lividness under the stream 
of her words. 

“ And you believed her ? ” His tone is as low as 
her own, and there is in it less of reproach than of 
an unbounded astonishment. 

“ Ho, I did not ! ” replies she, impetuously, be- 
ginning already, before he has uttered a word in his 


116 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


own defense, to repent of her distrust of him. “ I 
did not know what to think ; she was so circumstan- 
tial, she had it all, chapter and verse.” 

“You believed that I had quite forgotten 
Anne ? ” There is still in his voice that profound 
astonishment, but mixed now, both in his tone and 
in his woful eyes, with a deep upbraiding. 

“Oh, no! no! You mistake me!” cried Mrs. 
Lambart, more and more distressed. “ I should 
never have thought of believing her — scandalmonger 
and evil-speaker as I know she is — only she went in- 
to such detail that she staggered me ; she said she 
was not speaking only on her own authority — I sup- 
pose she knew 7 1 should not attach much importance 
to that — but that her nephew, young Smetliurst, had 
told her. She said he was most rigidly truthful. 
He must be very unlike his aunt if he is ! ” She 
ends wdth a flash of bitter humor coming into her 
w 7 et eyes. 

“ Young Smethurst told her what? ” 

“ He told her ” — speaking very fast, and as if the 
words she uttered almost burned her lips in their 
passage through them — “ that he himself had found 
this American girl once, I am not sure that he did 
not say twice, but once certainly — closeted with you 
in the bursary ; that he had often met you at dusk 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


117 


loitering about with her ; and that the other day he 
had passed you walking through Port Meadow in a 
storm of rain, she very disheveled, with her hair all 
about her ears, and you helping her to — but I do 
not believe it — ” (interrupting herself with positive 
violence), “do not for one instant suppose that I 
believe it ; the moment I saw your face I knew that 
it was a lie, a tissue of lies ! Do not pay their false- 
hoods the compliment of even denying them. I 
know you never had her in your bursary, nor — ” 

“But I had,” interrupts he, stemming the tor- 
rent of her words with what wears much less the 
air of a confession than of a plain and matter-of-fact 
statement. 

Her jaw drops, but recovering herself, “Hot 
alone ? the Brents brought her ? There could be no 
harm in that ! You were not to blame for that.” 

“The Brents were not with her, she came by 
herself.” 

There is a painful silence, during which the bull- 
finch’s comfortable little monologue floats into them 
from the veranda. 

“ Then it is true ! ” Mrs. Lambart says at last, in 
a tone which only the fire of wounded feeling that 
burns through it prevents from being entirely icy : 
“ you did have her in the bursary, and you did walk 


118 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


with her in the dusk, and her hair did come down, 
and you did help her to twist it up ! ” 

The deepest red color chases the sheet-whiteness 
from Edward’s face. “Mr. Smethurst said that I 
helped Miss Wrenn to twist her hair? ” he says in a 
low tone of concentrated rage and indignation which 
comes with curious effect from one habitually so 
gentle ; “ if he did, I can only say that he lied, 
and that I shall have great pleasure in telling him 
so ! ” 

Red is popularly supposed to be the livery of 
guilt, and white of innocence; but Mrs. Lambart 
has lived too long in the world not to be aware how 
very often they change coats, and that there are 
quite as many scarlet-faced innocents and lily-white 
criminals as the reverse. It is, therefore, in a less 
inimical though still intensely distressed voice that 
she says, “ Of course, there has been gross misinter- 
pretation ; I quite see that, but ” — reluctantly — “ I 
fear there must have been some foundation; in 
fact, that you must have given them some sort of a 
handle against you ; I suppose ” — slowly — “ that you 
must have been seen about with her, that you must 
have walked and talked with her.” 

“ And why should not I ? ” The crimson which 
means so much more in a man’s face than a woman’s 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


119 


still burns in his, making him seem odd and almost 
unrecognizable by one who is used to his almost in- 
variable clear pallor. But he is looking her between 
the eyes, with the most absolute straightforwardness, 
and with no thought of blenching before her accusa- 
tions. His mode of receiving them is so unexpected, 
that for the moment it deprives her of the power of 
speech, and it is he who continues, “ She has been 
very kind to me ; she has noticed the children a great 
deal ; she has helped me about the servants.” Mrs. 
Lambart starts, and the thought darts through her 
mind of what an officious, pushing girl this must be. 
u She has ” — lowering his voice, as one entering a 
church — “ allowed me to talk to her about Anne ; 
should not I be grossly ungrateful if, in return, I 
failed to show her any small civility in my power ? ” 

He puts the question with such an absolute guile- 
lessness and innocency, that his hearer’s suspicions 
of him die down utterly, and are replaced by an 
immense and pitying wonder at his simplicity, and 
at that ignorance of the world, which, springing 
originally from his lack of a public school education, 
has been fostered by his one monopolizing passion, 
and the retired life that is its result. 

She shakes her head sadly. “ It would be all 
very well if we were living in Utopia ; though even 


120 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


there — since I never heard it was one of the United 
States ” — (a rather unkind hit at Miss Georgia) — “ I 
do not think it would be possible ; but w T e are not 
living in Utopia, we are living in a very ill-natured 
town ” (this is unfair, as Oxford is only rather ill- 
natured), “ full of malignant old women ! ” (an un- 
just generalization from one specimen). He does 
not interrupt her, but stands still half incredulous, yet 
growing shocked and blanched. “ And now that I 
am home again,” putting her hand eagerly on his 
shoulder as if in fear of his escaping her, “ you will 
not want her any longer ; you will not want any 
strangers, any forward Yankee to poke her nose in- 
to your house, and talk to you about our darling, who 
did not know or care anything about her. I think it 
a great liberty of her to mention such a subject to 
you, and I wonder how you could allow her ! ” 


CHAPTER IX. 


If you have a disagreeable thing to do — from 
swallowing a large Cockle’s pill upward — it is un- 
doubtedly best to do it quickly. Edward Lygon 
certainly loses no time in doing his disagreeable 
thing. It is a quarter to twelve by the time that his 
visit to his mother-in-law ends, and yet the church 
and college clocks have not finished telling the city 
that midday is reached, when he is ringing Miss 
Wrenn’s bell. If he had given himself time to 
think, he might have shrunk from the task before 
him, but he is in such a white heat of pained excite- 
ment at the thought of his supposed infidelity to 
Anne’s memory, that his passionate desire to clear 
himself of the imputation of this to him horrible 
crime and blasphemy, swallows up all lesser emo- 
tions. He has been too slow to understand that his 
fellow-townsmen, whom he had imagined kindly 
thoughted toward him, could credit him with so 
monstrous an unfaith, but now that he realizes that 


122 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


they in very truth do so, every minute seems a cent- 
ury that intervenes before he can rectify so hideous 
a misapprehension. 

Georgia is at home, and he is admitted by the 
maid with the matter-of-factness accorded to an 
habitue. She whom he seeks is in her wainscoted 
parlor, and alone. So far fortune favors him. 
Miss Wrenn is alone, but she is far from being un- 
employed. She is apparently going through some 
sanitary gymnastics known by the name of the 
“ Swedish Slojd.” At the moment of his entrance, 
she is in an attitude such as is not generally adopted 
for the reception of visitors. Her supple body, 
which it seems unnecessary to make yet suppler by 
the employment of any calisthenics, is bent into 
the shape of a sort of arch, leaning over as far as 
she can go, with her finger-tips touching the floor. 
Growing aware of his entrance, she comes up very 
red, not from embarrassment, but because all the 
blood in her body has gone to her head. He stops 
on the threshold doubtful as to whether he ought to 
intrude on what is evidently a private performance, 
but as soon as she perceives his hesitation she brushes 
it away. 

“ Oh, come in ! ” she says welcomingly. “ I am 
doing my Slojd. I’ve most done; I’ve only one 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


123 


more movement to do. You go and play with 
Teddy while I’m finishing up.” 

Mechanically obedient, he moves to the bird-cage, 
without the shadow of a smile upon his white face, 
and stands there, vaguely conscious that some ath- 
letic exercises of a kicking and plunging nature are 
going on behind him. By and by the noise subsides, 
and Georgia cries cheerfully, — 

“ You can look now ! ” Again, with the same 
machine-like exactness, he obeys, and his eyes rest 
upon a very pink hostess fanning herself vigorously 
with a blotting-pad caught up from the writing- 
table near by. 

“ It’s such fun, Slojd is ! ” she explains a little 
breathlessly. “ I do it every morning ; you ought 
to try it, it makes you feel as if you could whip 
your weight in wild cats, without half trying.” 

The extreme joviality of her tone, in such ghastly 
contrast with the furious misery and ire of his own 
mood, makes an answering speech out of the ques- 
tion. So she goes on, glancing at him wdth sur- 
prise, but a perfect want of suspicion that makes his 
task doubly difficult. 

“ Why, you look as white as the side of the wall ; 
you grub in those old ledger-books too much. Why 
do not you go and paddle round in the sun this 


124 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


afternoon ? It would do you a lot of good ! I tell 
you what : I did have a river engagement with a 
little rosebud of an undergraduate, but I’ll throw 
the infant over and take you up to Wytham to eat 
strawberries instead ! ” 

Her perfect confidence in the acceptableness of 
the offer gives him a stab of remorse, that lends 
him at last the power of utterance : “ That is what I 
came to speak about. I would not for worlds that 
you should throw over your undergraduate friend ! ” 
How extraordinarily white he is ! 

“But if I prefer my Bursar friend?” Still 
with that total unsuspiciousness of his drift. It is 
really horribly difficult for a courteous English gen- 
tleman to tell a lady he must give up the pleasure 
of her society — such an extremely friendly lady, 
too. 

“ I am afraid,” he begins, and at last there dawns 
upon her a perception of the cruel excitement that 
burns in his eyes and quivers in his tone, “ that even 
if you threw over your engagement, I should not be 
able to go with you to Wytham to-day.” 

“ To-morrow, then ? so much the better, my rose- 
bud and I can have our little play to-day.” 

His embarrassment grows perceptibly deeper 
and more painful. 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


125 


“ I am afraid that to-morrow will be quite as im- 
possible for me as to-day.” 

She drops her blotting-pad into her lap and 
looks straight into his eyes. 

“ Are you trying to say that you don’t want to 
go to Wytham at all ? ” 

There is a pause, during which the ticking of the 
clock and the piercing music pouring from Teddy’s 
tiny yellow throat are the only sounds audible. 

“What has Wytham done to you?” asks Georgia 
at last, but there is not so much joviality, and cer- 
tainly not so much friendliness in her voice. 

Still he is silent, and into her handsome, good- 
humored hazel eyes there comes a look that he has 
never in all their two months of good-comradeship 
seen there before. “ You had better take care,” she 
says warningly ; “ if you don’t look out, you’ll get 
my American up ! ” 

Whether it is the awfulness of this threat — 
only made intelligible to its hearer by the expres- 
sion that accompanies it — or no, Mr. Lygon speaks 
at last : 

“ You must not think me ungrateful to you for 
having borne with my wretched company so long, 
but — ” he stops. 

“ It hasn’t always been very cheerful,” she says, 


126 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


but lie looks so inexpressibly woe-begone, that her 
good heart softens to him, and the threatened Amer- 
ican does not definitely rise as yet. 

“ I have no right to cast the shadow of my life 
upon anything so bright ! ” trying lamely to find the 
ground least offensive to her, on which to take his 
stand. 

Again she looks at him with surprised direct- 
ness. 

“ Why did you never think of that before ? ” 

This question is so natural, nay obvious a one, and 
he is always such a poor hand at a subterfuge, that 
he again relapses into a most distressed silence. But 
she has no intention of letting him remain under its 
shelter. 

“Am I to understand,” she asks trenchantly, 
“ that this is one of your English manners and cus- 
toms ? If it is, I do not admire it, and in any case 
you had better speak out.” 

But that is just what he finds so impossible. 
Perhaps it will be easier if he walks about the room, 
and so avoids bearing the brunt of her imperative 
and now not friendly eyes. He paces quite to the 
end of the long, low chamber and back again, with 
agitated steps, before at last he gains the power of 
uttering this speech : 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 127 

“ My mother-in-law has come back. I have been 
to see her this morning.” 

“ I do not know what that has got to do with 
it,” replies she, suspicious of an attempt at evasion 
on his part. 

But he is too intent upon the problem ahead of 
him, the problem how to convey his drift to her, 
without too gross an insult, to heed or hear her. 

“ Though I reached the house by eleven o’clock, 
Mrs. Pennington Bruce had been paying her a visit 
before me.” 

ITer conviction that he is trying to shirk the 
point at issue grows stronger, and, angered both by 
this idea and by the clumsy irrelevancy, as it seems 
to her, of the topic substituted, she cries sharply : 

“ Mrs. Pennington Bruce ! What has she got 
to do with it? I do not know Mrs. Pennington 
Bruce.” 

“ The happier for you,” rejoins he bitterly ; then 
goes on, “ She came to tell Mrs. Lambart — ” an- 
other full stop. 

“To tell Mrs. Lambart what? For heaven’s 
sake, do not be so awfully slow ! I have to dig 
everthing out of you with a spade and pick ! It is 
worse than ditching.” 

“To tell her that” — how awful it* is!— “that 


128 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


there are reports going about Oxford relative 
to—” 

“ Relative to what ? ” in a tone of the highest 
exasperation. “ You are enough to make a bishop 
blaspheme.” 

“ Relative to — about — about — you and me ! ” 

There! it is out at last! He slurs over the 
words as if they tasted ill, and with an accent of the 
deepest disgust. There seems to him a disloyalty 
to Anne in the mere juxtaposition of the two pro- 
nouns. Georgia’s face, sensibly heightened in tint 
by her late Sloyd and her present ire, grows a degree 
or two redder, but she bursts out laughing, a laugh 
that, however, w r ould not disguise from the meanest 
observer the fact that the threatened “ American ” 
is by this time up in good earnest. 

“ About you and me ! Why, -poor innocents, 
what have we done ? They’ll find Teddy a horrid, 
improper bird next, I guess ; I doubt his character 
is standing on only one leg at this minute all over 
Oxford ! ” — with a scornful glance at the cage, on 
whose threshold its little householder is poised in 
preparation for his war upon the tacks. 

“ Reports ! vile, base, devilish reports ! ” he goes 
on, his wrath and misery rising with each word to 
an ever higher and higher altitude at the thought 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


129 


of the insult done to his dead idol by these half -true 
calumnies. 

u And you mind f You care what a lot of old 
chumps say? You mind about an old cat like 
Pennington Bruce, who probably does not know 
enough to come in when it rains! Why, you’re 
perfectly silly,” cries she, with as fighting a light 
flashing in her eyes as ever shone in those of her 
countrymen when they gripped each other’s throats 
in that most murderous of all recorded wars of theirs. 
He would be deaf indeed if he failed to hear the 
withering contempt in her tone; a contempt that 
envelops himself no less than the objects of his 
reprobation. But he is not deterred by it, nor yet 
by the picturesquely national figure of speech with 
which she expresses her scorn of the purveyor of the 
scandal, from saying what he has come to say. 

“ Yes, I do care. I care so much that I would 
give everything I possess in the world — not ” — with 
exceeding bitterness — “ that I do now possess any- 
thing worth giving — to stop their poisonous 
tongues ! ” 

He has said his say now, said it, as he feels un- 
comfortably, very ill. His own deep vexation for 
himself, hitherto paramount over every other con- 
sideration, yields, now the thing is done, to remorse 
9 


130 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


and concern for her, in the situation to which only 
her own kind and innocent heart and his stupid 
ignorance of the world has brought her. He would 
like to add something, something soothing and 
courteous, something of gratitude and friendly feel- 
ing, but the difficulty of wording it without sound- 
ing fatuous, coupled with the warning signal in her 
eye, hinder his making the attempt. And when she 
speaks he sees that his poor effort at conciliation and 
apology would have been indeed vain. 

“ You have been a long time in getting it out ! ” 
she says, and her high voice does not betray any un- 
steadiness, or anything but an icy resentment which 
he can not but acknowledge to be natural and just ; 
“ but it is out at last! You wish to drop me! 
Well, you never in all your days set yourself an 
easier task. If I came to Europe in search of new 
experiences, I have certainly found them! Good 
morning.” 


CHAPTER X. 


August has come, and now Oxford is indeed 
empty. Empty, among other people, of Miss 
Georgia Wrenn. Edward has a sense of relief on 
the morning when he sees Teddy in a traveling-cage 
stepping into a cab piled with gigantic iron-clamped 
American boxes. He has not to reproach himself 
with having shortened Georgia’s stay, since her de- 
parture does not take place for a good ten days after 
their rupture. But he is sensibly relieved when there 
is no longer the daily probability of meeting her in 
the street, or on the street, as she words it oddly 
and equivocally to English ears; and of receiving 
that bow, fricassee dans la neige , which has taken 
the place of her free and hearty greeting. The 
Lambarts are also gone, set forth on a trip to the 
Dolomites, to raise the old people’s spirits and test 
the affection of the young ones — Mandeville is of 
the party — by that severest of all trials, joint travel. 

Mr. Lygon is almost the last member of the 


132 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


University left in tlie town, since the workmen 
have been much slower in their progress with the 
new college wing than he had expected. But at 
last he too gets away, though it is not till mid- 
August that he can move himself and his children, 
whose little faces the ozoneless air of Oxford has 
begun to pale, up to a sequestered nook of West- 
moreland, where a small gray townlet nestles in the 
hollow by its river. He has heard of it casually 
from a chance acquaintance as being lonely and 
wholesome-aired and fair, though, happily, its beauty 
is of so quiet a type as not to draw down upon it 
any of the grewsome tourist hordes poured forth by 
Manchester and Burnley, and the other aggregations 
of human hideousness in which the Uorth is so rich. 
But it is seldom indeed that either crowded stage- 
coach, or packed “ sharry-bang,” disturb the still 
main street of Braith waite town. Quiet and un- 
towny, however, as the little mountain village is, it 
is not within its compass that he sets up his rest, but 
about a couple of miles away, at a lonely ruined 
Tudor house among the Fells, where some rooms 
still remaining habitable are let out as summer lodg- 
ings. 

There, on a still yellow evening, the little party 
arrive. The old house stands on a hill, which in 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


133 


front drops down steeply to the beck ; that bright 
comrade of all North-country wanderers. Large 
sycamores and ashes — unusually big for this small- 
treed district — stud the steep slope, and veil the an- 
cient chimney stacks and the little stone-coped win- 
dows ; so that one does not suspect the existence of 
this ruined beauty till he comes quite close, nor dis- 
cern the 300 years old walls grayly showing between 
the green leaves. A square tower, with an arched 
gateway, gives entrance to the semi-ruinous court- 
yard ; over the gateway a carved escutcheon partly 
rubbed away by 300 winters’ rains, but still showing 
the date of the greatest of the Tudors. Roofless is 
the solid square tower, with its floorless chambers 
showing their fireless hearths in mid-air. Through 
one of the chinks in these desolate once-focuses of 
light and warmth, a bramble is reaching its long 
arm ; and from another a tuft of nettles is springing. 
“ It is like my heart ! ” Edward thinks. A rowan 
tree covered with its red berries stands in the court- 
yard, out of which the banqueting-room opens its 
doorless entrance, and its gigantic hearth yawns 
black and flameless. Its untouched and untampered- 
with ruin is contrasted, yet not too violently, with 
the clean muslin curtains and scanty furniture of 
the inhabited portion ; furniture that scarcely makes 


134 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


a pretense of tilling the chambers where a Duke’s 
guests had been entertained. About the courtyard 
a collie dog or two are leisurely walking, off duty 
for the time ; some cocks and hens are scratching 
and prosing ; and below by the beckside, some tiny 
rough cattle are cropping the juicy grass. 

On this bland evening of late summer, it would 
seem hard to hit upon a spot meeter to revive the 
flagging roses in the cheeks of little languid chil- 
dren, or to soothe and soften a great sorrow. So Ed- 
ward thinks ; but a week later he is not so sure of 
the efficacy of the recipe ; not, that is to say, as re- 
gards the latter and sorer of the ills to be remedied. 
With regard to the children, indeed, there is cer- 
tainly no cause for disappointment in the virtue of 
the physic. At the end of a week, their white 
cheeks are “ ruddier than the cherry.” Billy, it is 
true, has been once moderately bitten by one of the 
collies in just reprisal for unjustifiable familiarities ; 
but this, to be fair to Billy, has caused but a very 
temporary interruption to an otherwise sound and 
fast friendship ; while Nanny trots all day along 
about the farm, hand in hand with a swineherd 
whose rustic charms are fast effacing the more urban 
graces of the ostler of the King’s Head from her 
young heart. And Edward himself ? 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


135 


At first the charm seems as though it were going 
to work upon him too. During the last sultry 
weeks in Oxford — in August Holywell is very hot — 
he has longed with an almost sick pining for the 
clean-aired freshness of the Horth country. Per- 
haps it will give him back the gift of sleep, for 
since his loss that insomnia which was a chief 
feature of his early delicacy has returned upon him. 
Perhaps the breath of the Fells will restore to him 
that gift which God bestows upon His beloved ; so 
that for a few hours at least out of the twenty-four 
memory may loose him from her tyranny. He has 
longed too inexpressibly for the solitude of the hills. 
Oxford has been empty enough in all conscience, 
as far as his own acquaintances go, but the empti- 
ness of a town must always be a fancy phrase, and 
present a widely different condition of things from 
that absolute silence and stillness of high places, 
which, even to the most thoughtless, has something 
of holy and hushing. When he lies down with his 
face hidden in the lap of the great green mother, 
she will soothe this terrible ache of his. Among the 
Fells he will grow to understand that there is reason, 
sense, perhaps even a mysterious kindness in what, 
among the buzz and hum of citied men, looks like 
the naked cruelty of his doom. In the quiet of her 


136 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


uplands, our mother Nature will speak comfortably 
to him, will soothe him first, and then brace him to 
win decently and honorably through what yet re- 
mains to be trodden by him of the arid path of life. 
He will be able, too, to grow much better acquainted 
with his children, he will have them always with 
him, and will be continually talking to them of 
their mother ; as Charles Lamb talked to his Dream 
Children of that Alice of his, who — in this, Edward 
is immeasurably happier than he — had, in real life, 
never blessed his arms. Yes, he will be forever 
telling his little children of that heavenly country, 
to which their dear mother is gone. Perhaps, by 
constantly talking to them with certainty of it, he 
will grow himself almost to believe in it. 

And for the first day after his arrival at Braitli- 
waite, it seems as if his hopes — very chastened and 
sorrowful hopes at best — were to be realized. He 
loses no time in trying his recipe. To-day he will 
not even have the children with him. He goes up 
to the higher Fells, up the stony mountain road that 
becomes by and by a mere green track, above the 
gray hamlets, above the trees ; around him in that 
silence of mountain places which he had hungered 
for, and which the noiseless feet of the small mount- 
ain sheep are too light to break. Away in the 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


137 


heart of the Fells, as in hot vigils on his bed in 
Holywell he had thirstily pictured himself ; among 
the little inner valleys, where one may for a while 
forget sad and sordid humanity, and remember only 
the smalt-blue sky with its stately cloud — Jung Fraus 
and Matterhorns, and the variously colored swell of 
the low mountains, to make up whose graduated 
greens and purples and wealthy browns, goes such a 
variety of verdure ; pale mountain grass, blown 
aslant by the fresh west wind ; rushes, staghorn 
moss, pink bell-heather and dark turf. One has to 
take the whole impression gradually to pieces to find 
what it consists of. In a fold of the hills where the 
valley and the Braithwaite church tower and the 
lower green-clothed slopes may be as much forgot- 
ten as a dead man out of mind, he lies down on his 
back, and sends his vision among the ranges of great 
white cloud- Alps, while the rushes sigh beside him, 
and the springy moss beds his restful limbs. And 
as he so lies sleep comes to him, and a little homely 
flitting dream of Anne, standing before him smiling, 
with her garden fork in one hand, and a fritillary 
root in the other ; and he awakes and goes home 
half comforted. But that was his best day, and 
there come no more so good. 

The next day he invites the children to accom- 


138 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


pany liim, and they comply with no particular un- 
readiness, if with no great effusion. He leads them 
by the beckside and over the low hills, which, 
irregularly charming, are thrown about the little 
town — that little town which, not specially pictur- 
esque in itself, yet with its twelfth-century church 
tower, its gray houses, and its azure smoke, marries 
itself in peaceful harmony to the enfolding valley. 
And as he so leads them, he begins to talk to them 
lovingly of their mother, as he had planned, to ask 
them whether they remember this and that of her, to 
tell them little tales of her childhood. And at first 
they listen with interest, even putting questions to 
him about that, to a child’s mind, fabulous period, 
a parent’s infancy ; but before long Billy’s attention 
is distracted by seeing his friend the collie cleverly 
circumventing some strayed sheep, and Hanny dis- 
covers a water rat cutting the current with his sharp 
nose on his way to his home in the beck-bank. 
After that Mr. Lygon entirely fails to recapture the 
ears of his children. When he sadly finds that he 
can not enchain them to his dear topic, he makes 
honest, if clumsy, endeavors to throw himself into 
their interests. But he is so absent, and fails so sig- 
nally either to answer satisfactorily or else success- 
fully parry the startling questions in natural history, 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


139 


suggested to them by the flocks and herds, the birds, 
and even the sticklebacks around them, that it is not 
to be wondered at if, by the end of the walk, they 
have grown to regard his attempted solution of their 
difficulties with undisguised contempt. 

On the f ollowing day when he repeats his invita- 
tion they plead pre-engagements, and on the day 
after that, with the naive brutality of childhood, they 
frankly say they had rather not. He is much too 
sensitive, and too fully impressed with his own ex- 
treme undesirability as a companion to insist; so 
thenceforth he treads the thymy turf of the high 
places alone. He had wished, nay hungered for 
solitude, and he has it now in well-nigh perfection. 
Beyond a daily question to the nurse as to the health 
and morals of her charges, beyond a couple of 
friendly phrases exchanged with the farmer and his 
men as he passes through the ruined courtyard, he 
need never stir his tongue nor hear the sound of his 
own or any other voice but that of the bleating sheep 
or the crowing grouse on the hillsides, from one day 
to another. 

At first, though wounded at his inability to make 
his company pleasant to his little ones, there is a 
certain relief in having no call upon his attention, 
in being able to give himself up without let or 


140 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


hindrance to liis dreams and memories. He has 
brought but few books with him, and in a lodging 
there is nothing to tempt any one to stay indoors, so 
he is out the livelong day, and far on until the 
already shortening evenings. He walks miles over 
the Fells, climbing stone walls, that, unless judi- 
ciously treated, tumble a cartload of their mortarless 
blocks upon you as you descend from them; he 
plunges awkwardly into the wet bog places where 
the red moss grows, and pries into the mysterious 
rock holes of unfathomed depth, that in one spot he 
has found hollowed by the patient action of water 
far into the heart of the hills. He had wished for 
such solitude, and he has it, but it is a truism to say 
that our wishes, when gained, often laugh in our 
faces. At the end of a week he is asking himself, 
in wonder, how one so unhappy could ever have 
looked upon loneliness as a boon, and at the end of 
a fortnight he is telling himself that he must flee 
from it, as if it indeed were the fearful fiend whose 
guise it is beginning to wear. 

After that first day of false sweet promise he has 
no more pleasant sleeps and comfortable dreams on 
the hillside, but rather he grows daily more assailed 
with dreadful visions, soul-paralyzing doubts, and 
wild despairs. What real reason, apart from senti- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


141 


mental fallacies — what reason such as could form 
the basis for any practical action in life — what rea- 
son that the paltriest Agnostic could not drive a 
coach-and-four through, has he for believing that 
Anne is really in a state of felicity ? that she is even 
at rest? that she even still exists at all? When 
these horrible questions buzz louder than usual in 
his tortured ears, he feels himself, half -in voluntarily, 
peering more eagerly than ever down into those 
fathomless, dark rifts in the limestone rocks, as if 
he would jump in to seek the answer there. His 
wretchedness reaches its culminating point one day 
late in the month, when the temptation to crane 
over the mystic black rock-mouth has driven him, in 
sheer fright of himself, to turn his back upon the 
fiend-haunted Fells. He flees from them to the 
green, fields, to where a line of deep foliage shows 
where the babbling river runs. He climbs down 
the steep bank to it, slipping from ledge to ledge 
of the hard conglomerate, that yet the patient water 
has worn and rubbed and kissed and fretted into a 
thousand strange cavities. Such hard rock ! and 
such gentle water ! and yet the victory lies with the 
lipping flood ! The river is so low this August day, 
that he could step easily across it from one flat stone 
to another. In mid-channel he throws himself 


142 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


down upon a horizontal rock, and lays first his hot 
lips, and then his tanned forehead, against the cool 
kiss of the dwindled stream. Around him small 
pools lie, showing their amber depths to the sun ; 
at his elbow are two tiny cascades, one above an- 
other, in mimic tumble. Here is a channel, no 
wider than a roof-spout, pouring straight and quick 
into a wine-dark yet clear basin; here are water- 
weeds that look like Haiads’ hair, so long and wet ; 
and everywhere such wondrous shades as the Pro- 
tean water, that has falsely got the name of colorless, 
can wear ; amber from the bright floor, gold-green 
from the stooping tree-boughs — it lays under contri- 
bution all things that come into contact with it. 
Perhaps among them these fair influences comfort a 
little the morbid spirit that has brought his pain to 
their balm, for by and by he sits up, and, holding 
his head hard between his hands, begins to try to 
think connectedly. What is he to do ? What is to 
become of him ? If he could go away into the thick 
of some dense-peopled city, where he would be cease- 
lessly jostled by crowds of fellow-creatures, when 
there would not be a moment free from some claim 
upon his attention ! If even he could go back to 
Oxford and Holywell ! to his books, to his bursary ! 
But to that project the thought of the children says 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


143 


emphatically, “ No.” How could he have the bar- 
barity to snatch them away in his selfishness, six 
weeks sooner than necessary, from the life-giving 
air and the wholesome country pleasures that have 
turned their little lives into one long feast-day ? Six 
weeks! Can he hold out six more weeks against 
himself and his demons ? This is what he asks as 
his eyes rest absently upon the gray stones which 
the scooping water has kissed into such an endless 
variety of shapes, that it would seem as if some 
wildly playful imagination had been at work in di- 
recting the quick rivulets and varying the tiny lakes, 
some of which, though tiny, are yet deep, like baths 
for frolic river-gods. Six weeks ! And those pro- 
found rock-mouths always there ! Always at hand ! 
always inviting ! If the Lambarts were but here ! 
Mrs. Lambart with her identity of interests, her un- 
plumbed depths of sympathy, and her incorrigible 
cheerfulness! If even Georgia Wrenn were within 
reach! Georgia Wrenn with her odd lingo, and 
her warm heart, and her tyrannic good-comrade- 
ship ! If there were any one, any pitiful human 
creature to whose hand he could cling to help him 
up out of these awful shadows back into the com- 
mon daylight! Is it in answer to this unfinished 
aspiration that, while his mind is still wholly pos- 


144 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


sessed by this desire, the noise of voices approaching 
breaks upon his ear ? He had prayed for human 
companionship, and yet his first impulse on catching 
the sound of women’s, and educated women’s, tones 
is to flee from them. He looks apprehensively to- 
ward the river-bank whence the low tones seemed to 
come, and which the thick-tressed trees follow like 
courtiers a king. Over the flat rocks bend the syca- 
more, the cherry, the ash, the rowan, the only red- 
esigned tree which stands out recognizable from 
far by its mercifully useless clusters of berries. 
What a mercy that they are useless, else would ruth- 
less man long ago have wrought his accustomed 
havoc upon them ! It is of the rowan-berries that 
the voices, when he can distinguish them, are speak- 
ing: 

“ They remind one of Scotland ! What a fraud 
it seems that we are not there now!” The speakers 
have come into sight, and Edward, whom an instinct 
of good-breeding has made rise to his feet, looks at 
them across the intervening stones and lakelets, 
while they look back at him. 

“ Edward ! ” cry they both in a breath. Their 
recognition comes quicker than his; but another 
moment, and a narrower look reveals to him, with a 
feeling of distinct vexation at first, that these stran- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


145 


gers are none other than the cousins who had paid 
him. their undesired and officious visit at Oxford in 
Commemoration week. 

“ What a pleasant surprise ! ” cries Mrs. Crich- 
ton. “ Are you coming over to us, or must we go 
over to you ? ” 

His answer is to cross the stepping-stones and 
join them, and in a moment more they are shaking 
his hand with cousinly warmth, and expressing a 
joy that is all the better feigned for being almost 
wholly real at the meeting. The voices of both are 
soft and pleasant, and their faces speak so kind and 
warm a welcome that a sort of revulsion of feeling 
from his first annoyance comes over him. Perhaps 
this is the answer to his forlorn aspiration for hu- 
man fellowship ! Perhaps these kindly creatures 
have been sent to help him in the fight with his 
devils ! 

“ Yes,” he says in answer to their fire of inter- 
ested questions, “ I have been here a fortnight, and 
shall probably be here six weeks longer ; but you” — 
with a regretful air born of his last dawning hope 
about them — “you are, of course, only passing 
through. You would not be likely to stay at so 
out-of-the-way a place ? ” 

“ But we are staying,” answers Mrs. Crichton 
10 


146 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


— “staying indefinitely; we are looking after my 
old uncle, Mr. Eden, at Braitliwaite House, just on 
tlie brow of Leek Fell ; old Charles Eden — no doubt 
you have met him ? ” 

Edward shakes his head. “ I have met no one ; 
I know no one here, not even by name ; I have 
been leading the life of a hermit-crab.” 

“ 1 can not say that you look as if the regime had 
agreed with you,” rejoins she with a smile of friend- 
ly solicitude ; “ does he, Albertina \ ” 

The girl thus appealed to assents with a greater 
emphasis then her subdued accents usually express, 
and Edward’s eyes once more rest upon her, this 
time with a feeling akin to surprise. Here in these 
ampler surroundings she does not look nearly so 
gigantically tall as she had done in the little, low 
drawing-room and narrow garden of Holywell, nor 
does she nearly so much, as there, give the idea of 
the fine lady from London w T ho had struck awe into 
Eliza’s soul. This is probably because she is very 
plainly dressed, and looks out of spirits. Had Mr. 
Lygon but known it, she has ample cause to do the 
latter, seeing that she has spent the time since their 
last meeting, viz., the latter portion of her London 
season, in getting into what is popularly called a 
“scrape.” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


147 


Albertina is under a slight social cloud, which, 
in their more sanguine moments, she and her moth* 
er hope to be only transitory, but meanwhile the 
fountain of her autumn visits has stopped playing, 
and the retirement of the dull old uncle’s West- 
moreland manor-house is welcome. She answers 
her cousin’s look with a glance not much merrier 
than his own. 

“ You look ill,” she says gently : “ are you 
ill ? ” 

“ No,” he answers, “ not that I know of ; but I 
suppose I must have got moped with my own soci- 
ety ; I have had nothing else since I left Oxford, 
and one may have too much” — with a nervous 
laugh — “ of even the best thing ; but now,” recall- 
ing his late need of human aid, “ if you are really 
making some stay, you will let me have a little of 
your society instead ? ” 

He has been so little used of late to offer his 
company to any one, or to do anything but wincing- 
ly refuse it when asked, that he makes his slight 
overture very diffidently ; but the mode in which it 
is received is such as could hardly fail to reassure 
him. 

“A little of our society ! ” cries Mrs. Crichton. 
“ My dear boy, you may think yourself lucky, in- 


148 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


deed, if you get off with a little of us. Just con- 
ceive the boon you will be to us! Will not he, 
Albertina ? ” 

And Albertina, lifting her long-saddened blue 
eyes, echoes, “ Will not he f ” 


CHAPTEE XI. 


“ How very glad he was to see us ! ” says Miss 
Crichton, in a key of half-amused surprise, when, 
having parted from their new-found cousin, she and 
her mother saunter home together up the evening 
Fell. 

“ Poor fellow ! ” replies Mrs. Crichton, “ I dare 
say he is a little tired of being broken-hearted!” 
This cynic utterance draws no rejoinder from the 
daughter, whose mind is occupied by the nice prob- 
lem as to whether a broken heart or a chipped repu- 
tation be the more desirable property. 

“ He really will be a boon to us,” pursues the 
mother presently. 

“ Do you think so ? ” (rather dubiously). 

“ Yes, I do ! Of course he is not a man of the 
world, but I am sure that something might he made 
of him.” A moment later, “ How long has his wife 
been dead ? ” 

“ About six months, I fancy.” 


150 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


“ Oh, surely more than that ; it must be nearer a 
year.” 

Albertina shakes her head, and though no more 
is said on the subject, she perfectly understands the 
thought that had dictated her parent’s question, 
and had tinged with disappointment the tone in 
which she combats the idea of Anne’s having passed 
away so short a time ago, as to render plans for his 
re-establishment by her widower’s well-wisher, rather 
premature. 

The next day these well-wishers pay him a visit 
at his farm-house. He lialf-invited them, although 
before the visit is paid he has time heartily to re- 
pent of having done so. And yet the expecting 
them before it, and the necessary distraction of ideas 
consequent upon it, are perhaps of some little service 
to him. On their first arrival, indeed, he feels a 
miserable shyness and strangeness in practicing the 
disused role of host. But they come in looking so 
natural, and in such unassuming country clothes, 
that this feeling soon wears off. Mrs. Crichton sits 
down on the one horse-hair armchair, and Albertina 
wanders about the room, amusedly examining the 
lodging-house furniture, with less of that determina- 
tion to admire through thick and thin, which had been 
a little too patent on her visit to Holywell. The 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


151 


decorations consist chiefly of a bowl full of funeral- 
cards on the middle of the table, and an extremely 
ingenious antimacassar, done in little square blocks 
of crochet, and representing King David in profile, 
with crown on head, and one hand with conscien- 
tiously executed five fingers sprawling over a harp. 

“ What a delightful chair-back ! ” cries Miss 
Crichton ; “ but has he only one arm ? ” 

“ He has another hand, but it is be’ind ’im, as the 
children informed me yesterday,” replies Edward. 
“ I wonder ” — in a distressed voice — “ why they 
always leave out their h’s ! ” 

“ The children ! Oh ! are not we to see the 
children ? ” cry both visitors, inwardly thankful to 
this incidental reference for jogging their memories, 
and by and by with a little delay the children are 
produced. The delay is due to the fact that both 
are in disgrace, and that the summons to descend 
finds them both compulsory listeners to the story 
of Cain and Abel, which owes its application to the 
fact that this morning, during their toilet, their 
nurse having left the room for five minutes, returns 
to find both bawling, Nanny grasping a brush in her 
hand, while they discharge these high-class recrim- 
inations : 

Nanny : “ ’E ’eld me by the ’air, ’e did ! ” 


152 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Billy : “ She ’it me on the ’ead, she did ! ” 

However, Cain and Abel being deferred till after 
the visitors shall be gone, and the rosy faces being 
washed, Miss and Master Lygon are allowed to 
appear and enter hand in hand, but they neither 
look nor feel very good. 

“ So I hear you are in a great hurry to get back 
to Oxford ! ” says Mrs. Crichton, affably opening 
the conversation with a playfully ironical allusion to 
the children’s supposed delight in their present home. 

“ Who told you so ? ” asks Billy in a downright 
voice. 

“ Who told me ? Oh ! a little bird.” 

The child walks to the window, and, after look- 
ing thoughtfully out for a moment or two, turns 
round again w T ith the joyful air of one who has dis- 
covered a great truth. 

“ I know ! It was one of those blooming spar- 
rows ! ” 

Both ladies burst out laughing. 

“ Good heavens ! Edward, where could he have 
picked up such a word ? ” 

“ Sam says 4 blooming,’ ” puts in Nanny with ex- 
planatory distinctness and with a momentary return 
of memory to her urban love, “ he said ‘ bloomin’ 
everythink ’ ! ” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


153 


This remark is not calculated to check the 
guests’ mirth, which encourages the little innocents 
to repeat the obnoxious epithet a great number of 
times. And even when they are hustled out of the 
room by a scandalized parent, they are heard still 
proclaiming it to the banisters on their way up to 
the nursery. 

Whether it is that they are scared away by his 
offspring’s bad language or no, the Crichtons do not 
repeat their cousinly call. But this does not by any 
means imply a cessation of intercourse between the 
new-found kinsfolk. Not that Edward is at first 
persuadable to do more than return their visit by 
the formal call which courtesy demands, but the ac- 
cidental or quasi-accidental meetings w T hich almost 
daily take place, make ample amends for the loss of 
any deliberate civilities. Although his solitude had 
grown terrifying to him, he is at first gravely put 
out by the now hourly chance of its being infringed ; 
yet since the human soul is a scarcely less adaptable 
thing than the human body, before he is well aware 
of it, he has dropped into the habit of allowing the 
intruders, when met, to accompany his steps, a little 
later of accompanying theirs. 

During the first days of this new companionship, 
they walk, and saunter, and sit all three together. 


154 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


But by little and little the older lady oftener drops 
behind on some slight pretext of weariness, smilingly 
saying she will not be a clog upon the other two, 
but will wait their return upon some mossed stone, 
beneath some gnarly hornbeam or alder. The 
change is so gradual, and broken by such frequent 
returns to the trio, that Edward never notices it. 
If ever the bulky form of Mrs. Pennington Bruce 
rises before his mind’s eye, it is to make him con- 
gratulate himself upon there being in this innocent 
hill country no evil eyes to mis-see, no viper tongues 
to mis-read his harmless actions. Even if there 
were such, is not Albertina his kinswoman ? But in 
point of fact he scarcely gives the subject a thought, 
but just drifts without intention into the habit of 
her society. They do not talk very much when 
they are together. Albertina is so unaffectedly dis- 
pirited by her own misfortunes as to be much more 
in tune with him than the finest acting could have 
made her had she been in her normal state. So they 
walk along side by side, their pensive eyes fixed upon 
the gentle prospect, and occasionally exchanging a 
languid sentence. 

There is one spot more frequented by them than 
any other, a sort of cup in the hills, a peaceful green 
amphitheatre, where Oberon and Titania and the 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


155 


valiant Pigwiggin — their differences forever ended 
—must nightly dance. A little wood, mysterious- 
hearted as woods, however little, always are, bounds 
it on one side. On a second stands a lonely empty 
cattle-shed ; on a third, a steep bank rises, pranked 
in the glory lent it by a mountain ash. 

It is while sitting here one evening, she higher 
up the bank, he couched on his elbow a little below, 
that he first begins to speak to her of Anne. And 
the day draws downward, and the Lake mountains 
-—in broad day, only a faint suspicion of mountains 
easily to be mistaken for white clouds on the horizon 
— come out into more distinctness. Saddleback’s 
long spine, hazy Helvellyn, pale Skiddaw, and the 
nearer range, that all day have eclipsed their greater 
brethren, subside into their real places, their restless 
light and elfin shadows exchanged for one same 
wrapper of even purple. And above on the sky a 
thin cloud lies asleep, its dark fabric laced here with 
gold and there with silver. After that, not a day 
passes without his easing his sick soul by some rem- 
iniscence, some trait, some tender rueful story of his 
dead love. His hearer might be touched by his 
childlike confidence in her interest in his one theme. 
Perhaps she is a little, though for the most part her 
attentive air covers an entire absorption in her own 


156 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


woes. She is a graceful listener, with her long, 
narrow, blue eyes fixed on his face, and the little, 
soothing, half-articulate murmurs with which she 
accompanies his recital. Since he can’t look through 
her gown and her white flesh into her absent, dis- 
contented heart, it is no wonder that he finds her 
a sympathetic audience. And after a while she really 
grows a little interested in Edward himself, though, 
to do her justice, never in the least in Anne. 

And now a month has passed since their first 
meeting, and September nears its end. The night 
has been one of loud rain and storm, and perhaps it 
is the torn-off leaves and wrenched-away twigs and 
even boughs of the garden trees upon which Miss 
Crichton’s eyes are fixed that give them their look 
of aggravated gloom, as she stands after breakfast 
in the bow window of her mother’s room, morosely 
looking out. 

“ I wish you would give up the idea,” she says 
irritably, “it is perfectly useless ; and oh, if you 
only knew how sick I am of Anne ! ” 

Mrs. Crichton is writing letters, but pauses with 
suspended pen. 

“He never gives me a thought,” pursues the 
daughter. 

“ He takes a very odd way of showing it, then,” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 157 

rejoins the mother dryly, “ he is never out of your 
pocket.” 

“ I am only a jug to pour his lamentations over 
that eternal Anne into ; any other jug would do as 
well.” v 

u I can’t credit it ; you must remember ” (with 
a slight laugh) “ that some men need a little 
help.” 

“ His wife has been dead only six months, and he 
is not in the least my sort.” 

“ That is nonsense, Albertina! You know that 
you like him.” 

“ I like him in a way, but he is not my sort. 
We have not an idea in common when we get be- 
yond that everlasting Anne. I try not to listen, but 
one must attend to a certain extent, and oh, how 
sick I am of her ! ” 

Mrs. Crichton sighs. 

“ My dear, in ordinary circumstances I should be 
the last person to advocate it, but you have made 
such a hash of your life, that I see no better way 
out of the impasse into which you have got. You 
certainly would be cold-shouldered in London next 
season ; but if you married respectably, and lived 
quietly in the country for a while, everything would 
blow over ! ” 


158 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


“ But she has been dead only six months,” cries 
Albertina, “ tiresome thing ! it is just like her ! ” 

And then though they are very much vexed, 
they both laugh a little. 

As the day goes on the wind rises yet higher, 
and by afternoon blows so furiously that it is diffi- 
cult for even grown people to keep themselves on 
their feet. Nanny Lygon has been so repeatedly 
flattened on mother earth, with her black frock and 
her brief peticoats blown over her head, that she and 
her brother have been lured indoors, with the bribe 
of making griddle cakes for their own tea, and their 
father breasts the gale alone. Alone at first, that is, 
but to his surprise he has not walked more than a 
quarter of a mile upon the open Fell before he rec- 
ognizes in a wind-buffeted female form ahead of him 
the usually graceful outline of Albertina Crichton. 

“ I could hardly believe that it was you,” he 
says, overtaking her. 

“ Could not you ? ” answers she, struggling with 
her hat, which shows a determined anxiety to be 
“ over the border and awa’, ” and trying desperately 
to smile. 

“ It is rough,” he says, turning his face to the 
wind and inflating his nostrils, “ but how invigorat- 
ing ! I like it, do not you ? ” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


159 


“ Oh, yes ! immensely ! ” gasping, and making a 
snatch at her veil, which a frolic zephyr has captured. 

Albertina is by no means one of those athletic 
Englishwomen wdiose frames and whose clothes are 
built to contend with and enjoy the horse-play of the 
elements. Her favorite form of outdoor exercise 
being a drive in a brougham down Bond Street, it 
may be gathered how much truth there is in her 
present profession of pleasure. Edward is always 
too preoccupied to be very observant, and at first 
does not suspect the prodigious pains she is at to 
conceal her rufiled feelings. But at length even he 
becomes aware of her disgusted struggle with the gust 
and proposes that they shall take refuge in Bolton 
Ghyll, a sheltered valley between two Fells, into whose 
still bottom no rude wind can reach down his hands. 
But though there is no wind there is plenty of w r ater. 
It has rained, as beforesaid, profusely in the night, 
and the grass has kept plenty of the moisture* The 
beck — every ghyll has its beck — is running fast and 
full; over-running completely the stepping-stones, 
that in dry weather make crossing it no more difficult 
than crossing a mountain road. Edward has not 
visited this retired dale since the wet weather set in, 
and now walks absently on, scarcely perceiving the 
difference. But to cross a swollen brook in high. 


160 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


heeled patent shoes is no light feat, and it twists and 
doubles so perpetually that this feat has to be repeated 
on five or six occasions. At the best of times, Miss 
Crichton detests a scrambling walk, and at the sixth 
passage of the fierce little stream, her frantic efforts 
to pretend that she likes it break dowm. 

“Does it never run straight for two yards to- 
gether ? ” she asks in a tone out of which she is not 
very successful in keeping the profound despond- 
ency ; while to her own outraged heart she says, “ Of 
course, that hateful Anne always wore hobnails and 
a sou’-wester.” 

Edward is already on the other side ; but at the 
undisguisable lamentableness of her voice, springs 
back to her side. 

“ I am afraid it does not.” 

It is against her intention, but she can not help 
heaving a profound sigh, as she looks forlornly 
round. It is a pleasant little dip between two hills, 
with large ash trees and plenty of hazels and horn- 
beams standing singly on its green grass or making 
groups and copses, or leaning over its trickling 
rivulet. Some unexpected rich red rocks with great 
burdock leaves growing on them, and fern tufts 
springing out of their chinks, vary the sameness of 
the gray limestone with something of the strange 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


161 


effect of yellow hair and dark eyes in a woman. 
Albertina views them all with a despairing look. “ It 
is exceedingly pretty ! ” she says faintly, “ and of 
course one would like to follow up the valley to the 
end. But perhaps it would be wiser to turn back. 
Does not it look a little like rain ? ” 

“ Perhaps it does ! ” he answers abstractedly, and 
then to her infinite relief they turn homeward, plod- 
ding along in the same order as before ; he saunter- 
ing absently ahead, she struggling and floundering 
behind. But probably because her unaccustomed 
feet have grown weary, the return journey seems 
tenfold more arduous than the outward one ; the 
stepping-stones much farther apart, and the pools 
between far deeper. 

She is congratulating herself at last upon their 
nearness to the mouth of the gorge, and that this is 
the last time that the obnoxious stream will have to 
be passed, when Edward, who has preceded her, 
says, looking back down the glen : “ I suppose that 
this is my good-by to the Ghyll. I have decided 
to go home to Oxford on Wednesday.” 

“To go home ! ” 

Perhaps, despite her expressions of hopelessness 
as to the success of her mother’s project, she had 
built upon it more than she had confessed even to 
11 


162 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


herself ; at all events, there is nothing short of dis- 
may in the tone with which she echoes his words. 
She is standing poised insecurely on a dripping 
rocklet in mid-current when they break upon her 
ear ; and whether it be that the news conveyed in 
them distracts her attention from the care of her 
own safety, or from whatever other reason, but so it 
is that scarcely is her own answering ejaculation 
out of her mouth before one ankle gives under her, 
and she slips half-leg high into the beck. 

The noise of her prodigious splash brings back 
her companion’s straying gaze to her, and in a sec- 
ond he has plunged in, and, half lifting her out, sets 
her dank and dilapidated on the bank. 

“ Are you hurt ? ” he asks, solicitously, stooping 
over her. 

“What does it matter if I am? who would 
care ? ” she answers in a half-crying voice ; and to 
his astonishment and consternation, he sees that the 
eyes into which he is looking are full of large bona- 
fide tears. 

“ At least there is nothing broken, I trust ? ” 

“ I do not know ; my bones are so small, that I 
dare say my ankle is smashed.” 

Horrified at this supposition, and oddly unsus- 
picious of the ways of women, considering his life- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


163 


long preference for their sex over his own, he cries, 
“ Oh ! do not say so ! ” a moment later, as she still 
sits determinedly weeping on her stone, he adds 
diffidently, “Will you try to stand? do you think 
you could stand ? ” 

Without answering in words she puts out both 
hands to him, and struggles with great appearance 
of effort to her feet. He begs her to lean all her 
weight upon him ; and she obligingly complies, 
though nothing can be more absolutely sound than 
both her dripping and her dry leg. They are in 
this falsely tender position when suddenly from 
round the corner over a rude plank bridge which 
leads from the open Fell into the sheltered Ghyll, 
two figures — a woman’s first, followed by a man’s — 
come stepping. The woman, who is foremost, is 
eating chocolate bon-bons out of a bag, and is throw- 
ing some cheerful observations over her shoulder at 
her squire, in a high-pitched voice, which strikes 
with strange familiarity upon Edward’s ear. At 
the next moment the owner of the voice has stepped 
off the bridge and dropped her bag of chocolates in 
the wet grass. Edward is very near dropping his 
lovely burden, too, in the stupefaction of recogniz- 
ing Miss Georgia Wrenn! 


CHAPTER XII. 


For a moment they both stand staring without 
speaking, while the remembrance of their last most 
disastrous meeting darts through both their heads. 
It is not easy for any gentleman to know in what 
terms to address a lady who, when last she saw him, 
most unmistakably showed him her door. It is 
needless to say that the fair Georgia is the first to 
recover her speech. 

“Hame of my grandmother! How who would 
have thought of seeing you here ? ” There is un- 
doubtedly much surprise, but not a trace of hostility 
in the foregoing affecting apostrophe ; nor is there 
anything very inimical in the clear hazel eyes ; that 
last time he had the pleasure of encountering them, 
burned him up with the fire of their contempt. Miss 
Wrenn is of a forgiving disposition, and she can 
afford to be magnanimous, with a six-foot-high ref- 
utation of the Oxford calumny of her tenderness 
for Mr. Lygon stepping close behind her. 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


165 


“ And who would have thought of seeing you 
here ? ” stammers he, taken aback, and yet, though 
hardly conscious of being so, relieved at the friend- 
liness of her tone. Relieved too, perhaps, at her hav- 
ing come to his aid, as she had so often done in the 
Oxford days before the catastrophe. Albertina is 
obviously not hurt ; since, at the appearance of the 
strangers, she has skipped off, with undoubted 
soundness, two or three paces from Edward. Her 
dripping tears, unaccounted for by any broken bones, 
come back to him with vague discomfort. Hence, 
Miss Wrenn’s appearance, startling as it may be, is 
no bad thing. 

“ Oh, you need not be astonished at my turning 
up anywhere ! I am always kind of round in spots, 
you know ; the more unlikely the spot, the likelier 
for me to be round ; but you ? ” She accents the pro- 
noun heavily, and further dots her i’s, by an ex- 
pressive glance beyond him, at the seated Niobe ; 
who, having sunk down upon the least moist and 
least sharp bowlder she can find, is mopping the 
most accessible portions of her wet stocking with 
her pocket-handkerchief. That half -amused, and 
wholly-disturbed glance makes him deeply uncom- 
fortable. 

“My consm — Miss Crichton — my cousin has 


166 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


had a slight accident ! ” he explains hurriedly ; 
weighing as heavily upon the word cousin as she 
had done upon the pronoun you. 

In an instant Georgia’s good heart and her neat 
feet have carried her to the side of the sufferer, 
whom she has already recognized as one of the two 
ladies, whom she had surprised by popping her head 
over the dividing wall in the little Holywell gar- 
den. 

“ You poor thing! How sopping you are!” 
she cries ; “ a good swingeing dose of Jersey light- 
ning is about what your case needs most, I should 
think ! Just hand me that flask out of your pocket, 
like a good little boy, and I'll cure her in no time ! ” 

The mode of this address is not pleasing to Al- 
bertina, but the matter of it is agreeable. The men- 
tion of strong waters falls soothingly upon her 
chilled ear. The object of Miss Wrenn’s appeal, 
whom, despite his English clothes, Edward has al- 
ready perceived to be not one of his own country- 
men, now advances with extreme politeness to the 
sufferer, and, producing a very handsome flask, 
pours something out of it, which he offers to the 
young lady with the observation, “ Best old Bour- 
bon, I assure you ! Bucketfuls would not hurt you ! 
More you take the better you’ll feel ! ” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


167 


Albertina accepts ; and, having drunk, begins 
gracefully to thank the young man. 

As her gratitude is addressed entirely to him, 
Georgia thinks she may turn her attention to Ed- 
ward. “Well, we have not yet got at it — why are 
you here ? ” with that perfect directness of inquiry, 
that brings back Oxford memories. 

“ I came here six weeks ago, with the chil- 
dren.” 

“To be near your cousins, I suppose?” 

“ -No, no ! ” — with anxious haste — “ they had 
not an idea that I was here.” 

“ And so you just unexpectedly met and have 
been slumping in and out of puddles in a kinsfolky 
way, ever since ? Sounds nice ! Where are Billy 
and Nanny? You have not drowned them in one 
of these puddles, have you ? ” 

“ Oh no ; they are at the farmhouse, where we 
lodge ! ” 

“ Is it anywhere near, this farmhouse of yours ? 
I’d give a dime and a half to see those cute little 
pickaninnies again ; there’s a box of chocolate here 
that needs their help in finishing up, just the worst 
way in the world ! ” 

“ You are always so kind,” he says in a touched 
voice, — “ but ” — rather embarrassed — “ I am afraid 


168 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


you would not find them at home to-day. Mrs. 
Crichton has been good enough to take us all in for 
to-night, — and they may perhaps have set off by 
now.” 

“ Oh-h-h,” she answers. 

This •ejaculation is so fraught with meaning, that 
he feels as if he can not be in too great a hurry to 
add — “ It is only for to-night ! only just to please 
the children! You know how children love change! 
We shall be back in our moated grange to-morrow ; 
and any time after that, if you would do them the 
favor to come and see them.” 

“ I shall have to hurry if 1 do ; we are off to- 
morrow,” with a glance at the back of her country- 
man, who is still pressing his best Bourbon upon 
Albertina. 

“We?” repeats Mr. Lygon, with a small re- 
prisal upon his companion in the way of lifted eye- 
brows, an inquiring tone, and a glance in the same 
direction as hers. 

“ Oh ! we are not traveling tete-a-tete, Clint and 
I,” cries she with a laugh, and a delighted look, 
“though old Pennington Bruce would think me 
quite capable of it, you can just bet ! Clint has im- 
ported his sister and her husband along with his 
coach, and we have been prowling around these nice 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 169 

little English ponds up here, in what you call the 
Lake country.” 

“ Then I am afraid, we shall not meet again,” he 
says regretfully. Ever since she has appeared, he 
has had a sense of protection, and the old feeling of 
comradeship has returned upon him. 

“You had better come on the coach with us, and 
fetch the pickaninnies. There is lots of room, is 
not there, Clint ? ” 

Hearing this appeal, Mr. Clint (whose surname 
remains, to the day of Edward Lygon’s death, a 
secret to him) leaves his new friend and returns to 
his old one. “ Nothing would give me greater 
pleasure,” he replies, in a voice that contains no 
pleasure at all, but only a laudable endeavor to arrive 
at some simulation of it. However, if the proposi- 
tion arouses no joy in the dry American man’s mind, 
it is still less pleasing to the wet Englishwoman. It 
has scarcely been made when the latter, arising from 
her stone, joins the little group. 

“ I think,” she says, in a voice quite as cold as 
her legs must be, “that if you do not mind, Ed- 
ward, I will make my way home as fast as I can. 
Of course that need not affect you ; but I am so 
thoroughly chilled that I am really afraid of delay- 
ing any longer.” 


170 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Edward naturally can not resist this appeal to his 
chivalry. “ Of course ! ” he cries remorsefully, “ how 
thoughtless of me.” Then turning with a hand 
rather diffidently held out to Georgia, “ I will tell 
the children I have seen you, they will never forget 
Miss Wrenn ! ” 

“And it will be a cold day when Miss Wrenn 
forgets them ! ” says she heartily, while her honest 
and pretty eyes look full at him, w T itli the old friend- 
liness, and something not unlike the old compassion. 
But her last word is a jeer. “ Give Pennington 
Bruce my love, and tell her Clint and I are just 
having a perfectly lovely time ! ” and so skips light- 
ly across the stepping-stones that had caused Alber- 
tina’s disaster, and disappears. 

Despite Mr. Clint’s best Bourbon, it is a very 
pallid and washed-out Albertina who presents her- 
self at the dinner-table on the evening of that day. 
It would seem that it must be but a downhearted 
creature that would be dejected by the wetting of 
one leg, yet she is undeniably not up to even her 
usual rather low mark, in the way of spirits. Mrs. 
Crichton seems preoccupied, and the old uncle 
never wishes to be spoken to while eating ; an idio- 
syncrasy in which, as he is both deaf and dull, his 
relatives are only too glad to indulge him. These 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


171 

elements do not make up a lively whole, but it is not 
the triste character of the feast, which makes 
Edward during it repeatedly wish himself back in 
his ruined manor-house. Albertina is opposite to 
him, and there is a wilted air about her, which lills 
him with an uncomfortable wonder. Whenever he 
meets her eyes — and that seems oftener than usual 
— he appears to see a shot-partridge look, an expres- 
sion of reproach in them. It is not coarsely patent 
to any one else, but he feels as if he could not be 
mistaken in it. Can it be possible that she is bear- 
ing him malice for being the cause of her slight 
misadventure? But no, it is not resentment that 
her long blue eyes express. It is distinctly reproach. 
What can Albertina have to reproach him with? 
He racks his brain and his conscience for an answer, 
but both are equally empty. Yet his innocence of 
heart does not prevent his feeling great relief, when 
the two ladies leave the table, and greater still, when 
on reaching the drawing-room, he finds that Alber- 
tina has gone to bed. Her mother, expressing some 
uneasiness over her pale looks, follows her out of 
the room. 

The old uncle invites Edward to a game of back- 
gammon, and, as they play, the rattle of the dice 
and the announcement of the throws bring him back 


172 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


with that life-likeness which is the property of trivi- 
al sounds almost as much as of scents, those other 
games played by Anne and her father, so that by 
the time his old host has closed the board, drunk 
his toast-and-water, and with many unneeded apolo- 
gies, retired to bed, he has almost forgotten in 
a trance of tender regretful memories his present 
surroundings. 

But they come back to him later, as he sits alone 
in the smoking-room. 

To-night, whether it be due to the changed place 
and conditions, to the shuttered and curtained 
windows, instead of 

“The casement open to the night,” 

the absolute silence in place of the voices of beck 
and owl of his own farmhouse room, whether, I say, 
it be due to these causes or not, tobacco seems to 
have lost her gift of soothing. Yet worse, she has 
become a stimulus to painful thought and black 
imaginations. Upon the surface of that bottomless 
sea of grief, which lies always in his heart, a hundred 
disagreeable indistinct images play. Before this last 
new phase of his history there had been at least a 
oneness and simplicity in his suffering. To-night it 
is made up of twenty different elements. Chief 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


173 


among them is a stinging anger with himself for 
being here. What business has he in a house of 
even such extremely moderate festivity as this? 
If he had not come, he would not have had Alber- 
tina^ white face and unpleasantly unaccountable 
eyes opposite to him, His memory strays back, 
gathering fresh discomfort at every step, over the 
incidents of the afternoon ; his companion’s trifling 
accident ; her astonishing, and if caused merely by 
that accident, wholly absurd tears ; Georgia’s mean- 
ing looks and questions ; and lastly, Albertina’s own 
answer to his inquiry as to whether she is hurt : 
“ What does it matter if I am ? Who would care ? ” 
It is impossible that there could be less of the cox- 
comb in any human being than in Edward Lygon : 
a lady would have to dot her i’s with very black ink 
and cross her t’s with an uncommonly thick stroke, 
before she could hope to convey to his mind that she 
wished to make herself agreeable to him, but yet now 
as the chain of small circumstances adds link to link 
in his mind, a cold horror comes creeping up over 
his whole being, and though he is quite alone a dull 
red fire burns in his face. He feels a sense of suffo- 
cation in this hermetically-sealed room, and going 
over to one of the windows, draws curtains, unbars 
shutters, and leans greedily out. The tearing wind 


174 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


has fallen from scolding to sighs, and is telling a 
pitiful low tale to the tree-tops ; so low that through 
it the beck’s little tinkle is clearly heard. A small 
sickle-moon weakly lights the Fells. Oh that he 
could step ovei the silvered sill, and pass through 
garden, and over hill and dale to his farmhouse, now, 
to-niglit, this instant. However, of course, that is 
impossible. But to-morrow morning at the earliest 
hour consistent with bare civility, he will be off ; 
very likely before Albertina, who is no early riser, 
has left her room. And he will advance by three 
days his return to Oxford, so that in all human 
probability, he will escape meeting her at all 
again. 

The forming of these resolutions and the fresh- 
ness of the night air on his face combine to induce 
a calmer frame of mind, and an almost belief that in 
his late black fancies he has been the dupe of his 
own imaginations. Until to-night, the possibility of 
Albertina’s taste for his company having any other 
motive than womanly pity, and that superior power 
of adopting the woes of others, which has always 
made him prefer the company of the weaker sex, 
has never once crossed his mind. In point of fact, 
he has given very little thought to the subject, but 
has slid into the habit of her society, simply because 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


175 


it was kindly, and as he had thought, compassion- 
ately, offered him. This latter explanation of her 
readiness to be continually his companion, seems to 
him so much the most probable one ; and is so very 
much more in harmony with his own opinion of the 
extreme undesirability of himself as a comrade, than 
any other ; that as he stands with his head leaned 
against the window frame, it comes back to him 
gradually with almost entire reassurance. Not quite 
so entire, however, as to make him feel anything 
but repugnance toward the idea of going to bed, 
when he has a misgiving that the demons of ugly 
doubt would again assail him ; those demons that 
we all know to lurk among the softest feathers 
that ever adorned a fat goose’s breast, and stuffed a 
plump pillow. There is no reason why he should 
run the risk of meeting them. He is keeping none 
of the servants up by . his vigil, and has simply 
to turn off the electric light when he leaves the 
room. 

The clocks have just struck two, and he is watch- 
ing the young moon who has dropped so low r that 
only her horn still looks over the liill-top, when 
he is aware of a brisker current of air passing 
by him from the open window. He turns his 
head back toward the inside of the room, to ascer- 


176 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


tain the cause, which he at once sees to lie in the 
fact of the door having opened. Framed by that 
open door a woman’s figure is standing, a woman 
in a white dressing-gown, and with her long blonde 
hair hanging over her shoulders. The character 
of a grown-up person’s face is so entirely changed 
by having her hair drooping over her ears on 
each side of it, that for the first second Edward 
does not recognize the apparition, but as it comes 
hesitatingly across the room toward him, he sees 
with feelings of positive terror that it is Alber- 
tina ! He is far too paralyzed to speak, and even 
when she has advanced to within a pace or two of 
him, still stands staring at her in mute stupefaction. 
Perhaps it is the horror of his look which arrests 
her for a moment, for she pauses and says in a 
quavering voice, “ I had an idea that you were still 
up ; I heard you moving about, and — I — could not 
sleep ! ” She stops. He must conquer this terrible 
paralysis of voice and limb. He must make himself 
speak. 

“ I do not think you know how late it is ! ” he 
says in a husky low voice ; “ I think you had better 
go back to your room.” 

u Oh, do not speak to me in that tone ! ” cries she 
hysterically, and clasping her hands. “ Of course I 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


177 


know that I ought not to be here, but — but — I could 
not wait till morning, to ask you whether you really 
meant the cruel thing you said in Bolton Ghyll? 
whether you really are going away on Wednes- 
day ? ” 

Her words — evidence as they are of a catastro- 
phe so far worse than the worst which his dim 
apprehensions had foreshadowed — paralyze him 
back into that dumb stupefaction which he has made 
so desperate an effort to shake off. He only stares 
at her with distended eyes. 

“ Oh, do not look at me like that ! ” she murmurs, 
in a still more unsteady key than that before em- 
ployed by her ; “ it is all too miserable ! Oh, I wish 
I had never been born ! but you must not, must not 
go on Wednesday!” 

The latter words of this speech are made nearly 
inaudible by the fact that Miss Crichton has thrown 
her arms about her cousin’s neck, and is sobbing 
them out upon his shoulder. Her loose hair — wiry 
and elastic as blonde hair is so apt to be — tickles his 
cheek, and he feels the warmth of her hot wet face 
even through his smoking-jacket. Both sensations 
inspire him with nothing but a wild terror. Never 
in his life has he either spoken to, or touched a 

woman roughly, but now it is almost with ferocity 
12 


178 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


that he plucks her hands from about his neck, and 
throws her from him. 

“ You must be mad ! ” he says in hoarse pants, 
“ you are out of your senses ! ” 

“ I think I must be ! ” she answers faintly and 
staggering. 

Whether it is the force of his rebuff or the 
effect of the tumult of her own mind, she totters 
with so evident and imminent a peril of heavily fall- 
ing that common humanity forces him to stretch out 
his arms to save her, and into them she tumbles like 
a log, as the door, which the night wind has blown 
to behind Albertina, reopens to admit a second fe- 
male figure — Mrs. Crichton this time, with an ob- 
viously new- waked and hastily-dressed man-servant 
behind her. 

“It w r as from here that the noise seemed to 
come,” she is saying over her shoulder to the but- 
ler, as she enters ; “ I certainly heard some one 
moving about, and talking — Oh-h-h ! — ” with a 
change of key to the most unbounded astonishment 
and consternation, as she comes into view of the 
two figures apparently enlaced in so impassioned 
an embrace. 

For one enormous minute all four persons — 
since Albertina has not fainted — stand gazing at 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


179 


each other. Mrs. Crichton is the first to recover 
self-possession. 

“ I was mistaken in thinking that some one was 
breaking into the house,” she says, calmly address- 
ing the servant. “ I did not know that any one was 
still up.” The butler is no longer at all sleepy, the 
spectacle so unexpectedly offered to him having 
successfully chased slumber from his eyes, but he 
retires at once, and tactfully. 

Then again there is another long second of si- 
lence. Edward has dropped rather than laid the 
really nearly swooning girl into an armchair, and 
started away from her side. 

“What am I to understand by this?” asks 
Mrs. Crichton, in a low, concentrated voice. “ But 
why do I ask? Of course it can mean but one 
thing ! ” 

Mrs. Crichton’s hair is not like her daughter’s 
down her back ; at fifty no sensible woman wishes 
to let thin gray ropes hang, where once hung a gold 
or nut-brown fleece ; but her head is in its night- 
deshabille, and though her good looks still triumph 
over her night-cap, yet her face wears an unfamiliar 
air. Her eyes are fixed upon and her question ad- 
dressed to Edward ; but at first her words are mere- 
ly a meaningless noise in his ear. She sees by his 


180 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


dazed look that he has not taken in her mean- 
ing. 

“ Of course there can be but one interpretation 
put upon it ! ” she says, speaking very slowly and 
distinctly ; “ and at a fitter time, nothing would have 
given me greater happiness; but why you should 
have chosen such an unseemly way to do it in ! 
Why could you not have waited till to-morrow 
morning ! ” 

Her words are no longer mere noise to him now. 
Her meaning has reached his brain, in all its naked 
reality, and the room and the two women go round 
before his eyes. 

“ This is — all a horrible misapprehension ! ” he 
cries at last, having vainly struggled twice unsuc- 
cessfully to bring out an articulate sound ; “ you are 
laboring under a mistake — a most hideous mistake ; 
you must let me explain to you.” 

u You can not explain away the evidence of 
my own eyes,” rejoins she, with stern gentle- 
ness. “What you have to say in your own ex- 
culpation I will hear to-morrow. Come, Alber- 
tina ! ” 

“ But you must hear now ! ” cries he, beside 
himself, and throwing himself between her and the 
door, against which he sets his back. “ I will not 


A WIDOWER INDEED 


181 


let you go without learning what a damnable delu- 
sion you are laboring under. I — ” 

“ Edward,” replies she, the late mildness of her 
voice merging itself in severity, “ I must insist on 
your letting me pass, you are not in a fit state to 
discuss any questions to-night ; let me pass ! ” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


The little mountain sheep must have had their 
sleep disturbed — if indeed they did not spend all 
the moony night in wakefully cropping the upland 
grass — by the passing among them of a wild human 
figure. 

Edward spends the whole of the rest of the night 
out upon the Fells. When he realizes that he is 
not to be given the chance of clearing up the error, 
horrible even to grotesqueness, of which he is the 
victim, his one thought is to rush out of the ac- 
cursed house. He staggers out of the still open 
window, and flees through the garden out on the 
hills. He wanders about for hours — wherever his 
feet, with no guidance from his brain, choose to 
carry him. Sometimes the beck chatters close at 
his side ; sometimes its chatter dies away in the dis- 
tance. He walks swiftly, now and then breaking 
into a run as one pursued by a dreadful devil, who 
is gaining upon him. His mind is for a great part 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


183 


of the time too stunned and confused to enable him 
to present to himself with any clearness the blow 
that has fallen upon him. He has only a leaden 
feeling of having committed some enormous 
crime, of having been guilty of some monstrous 
impiety. At intervals, it is true, the sensation of 
Albertina’s hair brushing his face, of her feverish 
sobbing mouth against his shoulder, comes back to 
him in all its original vividness ; and then his dull 
leaden ache is exchanged for fiery shoots of agony. 
He has had another woman’s arms about his neck ! 
He has committed — unwittingly it is true, but yet 
committed — this unheard-of infidelity toward Anne. 

About dawn he finds himself sitting at the base 
of a lonely Cromlech stone, which is a sort of land- 
mark to three border counties, and from beneath 
which the desolate moors stretch away for solitary 
miles. The wind that blows rawly in the new day 
smites his face and frame with the same effect as a 
bucket of water dashed over one in a swoon. It 
brings him back to his senses, to a consciousness of 
how chilled he is, of how thin his smoking-suit, 
and that there is a rent in the jacket of it, and angry 
smarting scratches on his hands which tell that, 
though he was unconscious of it at the time, the 
brambles in the lane near the beck must have caught 


184 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


him with their spiny fingers as he rushed past them. 
The thought strikes him that he must look like one 
who has just committed a murder. And so he has 
— the wholesale murder of all his past. Mrs. Crich- 
ton’s words beat with loud iteration, and now with 
full comprehensibility — if there is such a word — 
upon his brain. u This can mean but one thing ! It 
can bear but one interpretation.” Anne has been 
dead a little over six months, and he has given some 
one the right — no, God forbid ! — God in heaven 
forbid ! — not the right — but the possibility of saying 
such a thing with such a meaning to him ! The 
cold that creeps through his ill-clothed limbs is ex- 
changed for hot throbs of remorse and fear, as he 
goes over in his mind, with strict severity, each mo- 
ment of his intercourse during the past months with 
his cousin ; to examine with the nicest exactness, 
whether in any smallest particular he can find any- 
thing with which to reproach himself. Diseasedly 
sensitive as is the state of his conscience, he can 
find nothing. He is entirely ignorant of the world 
and of the type of woman which the mother and 
daughter represent, and being by nature of an ex- 
tremely unsuspecting disposition — guileless even to 
simplicity — the idea that there could have been any- 
thing of calculation in Albertina’s conduct never 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


185 


enters his wildest imaginings. On the contrary, 
through the horror and loathing with which her 
action has filled him, there pierces a shuddering pity 
at what he never doubts to be the overwhelming 
force of a passion, which could lead a virtuous 
woman so far from the path of common decency. 

As his ideas gain in coherency and begin to 
range themselves into something like order, the 
future begins to 'encroach upon the past in his 
thoughts. His first resolution is to quit the neigh- 
borhood instantly, leaving the children, who would 
naturally return to their temporary home in the 
course of the morning, to follow on the day origi- 
nally fixed. It seems to him as if he could not draw 
a long breath until he had left these hills, for which 
he had so thirsted, and which have brought so un- 
speakable a calamity upon him, behind. 

The light is momentarily waxing stronger, for 
it is astonishing with how speedy a foot God’s best 
gift, when once her light tread has touched the 
mouutain crests, walks over land and sea. Before 
objects grow more visible — since he is in no fit trim 
to meet even the incurious rustic eye — he must try 
and get back into his farmhouse quarters. There is 
a casement often left open all night in his sitting- 
room, through which he may squeeze himself, and 


186 


A WIDOWER INDEED 


having changed his dress may lie perdu till such 
time as the open door and the later hour make it 
appear as if he had strolled rather earlier than ex- 
pected from the house where he has been paying 
his brief visit. 

He finds no difficulty in carrying out his plan. 
It is true that one of the collies taking an early 
saunter begins by growling at him ; but soon, like 
Keats’s bloodhound, 

“ His sagacious eye an inmate owns,” 

and he merely wags his handsome tail as if to say 
that he knows all about it, and hopes he has had a 
good night of it instead of teasing him with any 
tiresome human questions. He has even the good 
breeding to pretend not to see the gory brier scratch 
down his nose. This latter is not very perceptible 
when soap and water have been brought to bear 
upon it ; and there is nothing beyond his usual mel- 
ancholy beauty to attract attention to the young 
man, when, having made his toilet, he looks finally, 
and with a great deal more care than is his wont, 
at his own image in the cheap lodging-house mir- 
ror. 

Satisfied with the result of his inspection he 
passes into the sitting-room, and for the first time 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


187 


perceives lying on the table a note, which the then 
dim light and his own haste at his first entrance 
had made him overlook. For one shocked moment 
he supposes that it has pursued him from the house 
whence he has fled ; but a second glance corrects 
this impression. It is the handwriting of his sister- 
in-law, Susan Lambart. In this fact there is noth- 
ing very remarkable since they fitfully correspond, 
but what catches his eye is the circumstance that 
the letter has not passed through the post, but has 
obviously been sent by hand. He tears it open, and 
reads : 

“ Lowther Arms Inn, Braithwaite. 

“ My dear Edward, — How surprised you will 
be when you see my heading! We cut short our 
foreign tour, as there seemed to be so much typhoid 
about everywhere, and are taking a little English 
trip instead. We have turned a good bit out of our 
way to call upon you, so show your gratitude by 
flying to us as soon as you receive this. We are 
here for only a night. 

“ Your ever affectionate sister, 

“ Susan Lambart. 

“ Friday evening.” 

Friday evening. It must have arrived then dur- 
ing his absence ; during that dinner when he had 


188 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


sat opposite to Albertina and her eyes. He shud- 
ders. If he had received it in time the event of 
last evening would never have happened. 

He reads the note again and more attentively. 
“We are here for only one night ; ” and the date is 
twelve hours old. They may be setting off even 
now. Pained and confounded by his silence and 
his non-appearance they may be passing out of his 
reach at this moment ; his chance of salvation may 
be in the very act of being snatched from him as he 
stands stupidly here. Forgetting his plan of lying 
hidden till the advance of the morning may make 
his reappearance seem more natural, he rushes into 
the farmhouse kitchen where the farmer’s wife is 
tranquilly preparing breakfast; and it is only the 
woman’s start and exclamation of surprise that re- 
mind him that he is supposed to be still absent. He 
hurries over his lame explanation in order to get 
more quickly at the answer to his questions as to 
the mode and time of arrival of Susan’s missive. 
He finds that it had been brought over by a lad at 
about seven o’clock on the previous evening. A 
glance at the clock, telling him that it is not yet 
eight, reassures him a little as to the likelihood of 
his finding them, since they surely will not depart 
before breakfast ; and without a moment more 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


189 


of delay lie sets off at his best speed to Braith- 
waite. 

It seems to him as if he could not get over the 
ground quickly enough. He will not be safe till he 
is among them again. He will tell Mrs. Lambart of 
the horrible dream he has had, for surely it must 
have been one. He will explain to her everything 
exactly as it happened, and here there is no malig- 
nant old tattler to distort facts and misinterpret 
motives as in the case of Georgia Wrenn. His im- 
patience makes him push past the servant-girl at 
the little inn into the parlor where the Lambart 
family — he is not too late — are at breakfast. In a 
moment they have all risen from their eggs and 
bacon — even the Professor — and are clustering 
round him : their pleasant voices uttering exclama- 
tions of joy, and their affectionate eyes shining 
welcome. 

Edward tries to hold all their hands at once, and 
looks quickly from one face to another. How the 
likeness to Anne — always there, though formerly 
irritating in Susan — has gained in strength since 
last they met! Love has put a meaning and an 
added refinement into her face, and the resemblance 
is now startling. 

“ This is nice ! ” says Mrs. Lambart, in that in- 


190 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


tensely sympathetic voice of hers which impels her 
whole acquaintance to confide to her, not only their 
worst sorrows, but also their scurviest actions. “ Why 
did not you come last night? We were so disap- 
pointed.” 

“What had become of you?” add the others. 

He answers these questions so haltingly, that his 
evil conscience makes him falsely think that they 
look suspectingly at him. Well, what matter? He 
will be able to clear up everything in that tete-d-tete 
talk with his mother-in-law, to which he is looking 
forward with so famished an eagerness. But will he 
— this is the question which presently he begins to 
ask himself — get the chance of that talk ? 

“ This is a wretched scrappy little bit of a chat,” 
6he says, as they rise from breakfast; “our train 
leaves in less than an hour ; it is such a blessing to 
think that we shall so soon meet comfortably in 
Oxford ! ” 

He is beginning to mutter a hesitating suggestion 
as to the possibility of speaking to her alone, when 
Susan innocently breaks in, “We must not go with- 
out showing him — must we, mamma?” And so, 
smiling as at some agreeable surprise in store for 
him, leaves the room. 

Susan leaves the room, but neither the Professor 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


191 


nor Mandeville show any signs of budging, so that 
Edward is as far from his goal as before. 

“ Showing me what?” he inquires, with a puz- 
zled air. 

» 

“We have got Kemp’s designs for the window — 
the window in the Cathedral,” replies Mrs. Lambart, 
with that sort of hush and hallowing of the voice 
which marks the moment when we turn from com- 
mon topics to aught that has reference to our dead. 
“ We are very much pleased with them, but we want 
your opinion before we decide finally ; you might 
have some alteration to suggest.” 

As she speaks her daughter re-enters the room, 
carrying in her hand a small portfolio, from which 
she takes a drawing and lays it before Mr. Lygon. 
They all three look at it over each other’s shoulders 
in a touched silence. 

“Is not it like her? Has not Saint Anne a 
wonderful look of her ? ” asks Susan at last in an 
unsteady voice ; “ and he had nothing but our de- 
scription and those miserable photographs to go 
by!” 

Edward makes a movement of assent with his 
head, but there is much too big a lump in his throat 
to allow of his giving any audible reply. 

“ You know that he — Kemp, I mean — got the 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


192 

idea from those frescoes of Giotto at Santa Maria 
Novella, in Florence.” 

“Did he?” 

Perhaps Susan had expected some emphatic 
expression of pleasure and approval in place of 
these two bald monosyllables, for there is a shade of 
flatness in the tone with which she pursues, “You 
know the story? Joachim, Saint Anne’s husband, 
has been turned out of the synagogue, for some 
reason, I do not remember what, and she is receiving 
him home again afterward.” 

“ Yes ! ” in that strangled voice. 

“ She is standing at the door of a sort of tower, 
and he is climbing up a hill to her, and her arms are 
stretched out wide — wide to him, though he has 
been turned out.” Mrs. Lambart, with her nicer 
intuitions and her better understanding of the beat- 
ing of others’ hearts, has quickly taken hold of that 
one of Edward’s hands which hangs convulsively 
clinched nearest her. 

“She would have held out her arms to him, 
however many synagogues he had been turned out 
of, would not she ? ” she says very softly. 

In her gentle clasp his rigid fingers relax, and he 
returns her pressure with a violence that, though 
she gives no sign of it, hurts her. It is impossible 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


193 


that she can know of liis trouble, or have divined 
his thought, and yet there is a balm in her words, 
implying the infinite gift of forgiveness that his 
lost one possessed, forgiveness of all transgressions, 
even of that most innocently heinous one of having 
had other arms than hers locked about his neck. 
Again — nay, not again, since the passionate desire 
has had no moment’s intermission — that ardent long- 
ing for the opportunity to unbosom himself, to pour 
out his terrible new trouble into the perfectly under- 
standing ears of her whose delicate hand he is grip- 
ping with so unconscious a ferocity, assails him. A 
second time since his arrival he begins to stammer, 
in a tone intended only for her, his inexpressible 
wish to have speech alone with her, but once again, 
and as entirely unintentionally as before, Susan balks 
him. 

“You do like it?” she asks in a rather dashed 
tone, putting her hand on his shoulder and gazing 
wistfully into his cloudy eyes. “I thought you 
would have been so much pleased with it ! The ac- 
tion — the gesture is so completely hers — the delight 
with which she used to fly to you when you had 
been away for even an hour.” 

This is the last drop in his cup, and he turns al- 
most rudely away to hide, with an Englishman’s in- 
13 


194 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


stinct, liis quivering features, and unable to answer 
by word or sign the well-meaning girl’s injudicious 
appeal. 

The Professor’s voice strikes in welcomely, though 
with that accent of crossness which his family know 
to mean that some specially sharp pinch of grief is 
nipping his tender heart. He has taken only one 
look at the designs for the window, and has since 
been fidgetily walking about the room with his 
watch in his hand. 

“ Come, come, what are you dawdling about ? 
You will be late again as usual, Susan ! I give you 
my word of honor I will go without you if you 
are ! ” 

“ He is always such an old fidget ! ” says his wife, 
making a little affectionate grimace. “But I am 
afraid we must be putting our things on. How the 
time has slipped away ! Come to the station with 
us ? ” — this in answer to a suggestion diffidently put 
forth as a last hope by Edward. “ Ho, dear, do 
not. „ I had really rather you did not ! There is 
nothing in the world so unsatisfactory, and we shall 
meet so soon again ; good-by, dear, and God bless 
you ! ” 


CHAPTER XIV. 


Mrs. Lambart little knows how much her son- 
in-law needs that blessing which she gives him with 
so unsuspicious and easy a lightness ; nor what she 
has done in refusing him the five or ten minutes 
of uncomfortable broken talk possible on the plat- 
form of a small railway station. He is feeling this 
in a dim, muffled way as he stumbles, half -blinded 
by the tumult of his feelings, out of the little inn. 
So much blinded is he indeed, that he is only vague- 
ly aware, without actually seeing it, of a coach 
drawn up before the door, and a woman standing on 
the pavement ; when a clear voice, excessively cheer- 
ful and rather shrill, issues from that woman and 
accosts him. 

“You are too late.” The unexpected words 
chime in so startlingly aptly with his own whirling 
miserable thoughts, that he has given a positive 
jump, and gasped out, “Too late?” before he re- 
cognizes the speaker as Miss Georgia Wrenn, who, 


196 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


in a sailor hat and covert-coat, is apparently en- 
gaged in friendly conversation with one of the two 
smart grooms who are at the horses’ heads. 

“ Of course you were coming to call on me ? ” 
cries she, with that unvarnished and unblushing con- 
fidence in the desirability of her own society which 
goes more than half-way toward procuring the ful- 
fillment of her belief — “ but you have missed your 
chance.” 

He is far past any equivocation, and answers 
with bald directness : 

“Ho, I did not come to visit you; I have been 
to see the Lambarts.” 

“ The Lambarts ! Why it begins to look as if 
the whole of that dear little moth-eaten town of 
school-houses — all Oxford — had simply spilled over 
into Braitliwaite.” 

“ They are here for only one night,” answers he, 
but with such a moon-struck, absent air, that she 
looks harder than before at him. 

“ I can not say that even that small dose of them 
has agreed with you ! ” with a dry laugh, that covers 
a real concern and a still more real curiosity ; “ what 
in the name of sense have you done with yourself 
since yesterday ? ” 

He glances at her with side-long apprehension. 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


197 


Did that reassuring bit of bad looking-glass at bis 
lodgings deceive him ? and is last niglit written on 
bis face in characters that each chance passer-by may 
read ? No, for, if so, Mrs. Lambart would have 
read it with the tender penetration of her eyes. 

“ Done with myself ? Why, what do you 
mean ? ” 

If her rejoinder is an answer to this last uneasy 
question, it is an oblique one. 

“ How is that tine-looking damp cousin of yours, 
after her paddle in the brook yesterday ? ” 

Again one of those furtive glances at her, which 
seem to the girl a painful novelty in her old friend. 

“ I do not know ! I have not seen her this 
morning.” 

“ And I would not see her to-morrow, nor the 
day after that, nor the day after that, either, if I 
were you, my young Christian friend ! ” says she 
with energy. 

He does not answer in words, hut stares at her 
with what seems a dumb appeal for help. It is an 
appeal that comes back to her pitifully in after years, 
when she has prosperously espoused the coach and 
the grooms and Clint. 

“ Now , look here ! Let me give you a tip ! 
Just you put out from here right off ! You make 


198 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


tracks for Oxford, or Keokuk, or Kamtschatka — it 
does not make a bit of difference which — only some- 
where that you can not paddle round in creeks, with 
that cousin ! ” 

He has approached a step nearer to her, and a 
look of something like hope dawns in his eyes, while 
a yearning for entire confidence — futile, since in 
such a case as his what confidence is possible ? — yet 
a yearning all the same, for an entire outpouring of 
his trouble to this brave, friendly, wholesome creat- 
ure takes possession of his fainting spirit. 

“ Do you mean — ” he begins, but at the same 
instant is aware of a change in the expression of 
Georgia’s eyes; and of the cause of that change 
issuing from the inn in the shape of the carefully 
dressed, large American man who had been Miss 
Wrenn’s yesterday’s companion. He is followed by 
other figures, servants with provision baskets, ladies’ 
maids — all evidently prepared to mount the coach. 

“ It is awfully hard on me, Georgy, but Clint 
sticks to it that you are to have the box-seat again 
to-day ! ” cries a peacock-voiced pretty woman, evi- 
dently a blood relation of the large man ; and then 
they all seem to surround Miss Wrenn, and shut her 
off from Edward and his trouble, and he slinks away 
with his hat over his eyes, slinks away like a bat 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


199 


from the eye of day ! Georgia’s advice has tallied 
with his own resolution — that resolution so strenu- 
ously embraced upon the midnight Fells — for instant 
departure. And yet, after all, he does not take it. 
Though he has been balked of that outpouring of 
confidence to Mrs. Lambart for which he had longed, 
yet the mere fact of having been with her, of hav- 
ing touched the hands and heard the voices of 
Anne’s closest kin, seems to set the events of the 
last evening more and more wholly in the light of a 
frightfnl nightmare. These dear ones of his have 
shaken him by the shoulder, and now he is awake 
again. 

To flee away without word or sign, without 
availing himself of that opportunity for explanation, 
which last night he had so violently demanded, 
might be construed, as he now thinks he sees, into 
an admission that it has all been anything but 
a grisly error — an error so beyond all words or 
thought ludicrous, that if the horror of it were not 
stronger than the grotesqueness it would move even 
himself to laughter. Can there be any doubt that, 
when he puts the case before those whom he con- 
siders as the victims of a terrible delusion, wfith the 
quiet lucidity of which he is now capable, they will 
be convinced of and admit their lamentable mis- 


200 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


take ? Last night he was no doubt violent and in- 
coherent, but to-day — now that the unspeakably 
ugly idea is in some degree grown familiar to him 
— he can keep himself in hand ; can lift from be- 
fore their eyes the veil which has so unaccountably, so 
miraculously hidden from them that enormous and 
never-dying love and sorrow of his, which must for- 
ever make such thoughts as they had credited him 
with more wildly impossible than that the North 
and South Poles should kiss. 

If it is by any means to be avoided, he will not 
be brought into the presence of the unfortunate 
creature whose madness for him makes him cover 
his flushed face with his hands, even from himself, 
in the lonely silence of the hills, where his restless 
feet have carried him. Then, when the awful task 
is over — this task which is imposed upon him as a 
penalty for his own stupid, blind heedlessness, he 
will shake the dust from off his feet ; and leave 
them — to see their faces, God-willing, never more. 
Before this devil-sent insanity had fallen upon them, 
they had been kind and pitiful to him, and he would 
fain part from them in peace. 

But it is not for many hours — not till Georgia’s 
coach and team and sailor hat are throwing their 
long shadows over half a mountain field — that he 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


201 


succeeds in bracing bis nerves to tlie resolved on, 
but inexpressibly detested, task. His ring at the 
door-bell is answered with a promptitude so unusual 
in country houses of limited pretensions, particular- 
ly as now at this hour of the servants’ tea, and the 
butler has so much the air of expecting him, that 
he more than half repents his decision before the 
short passage between hall and morning-room is 
made. 

One panic-struck glance shot round as he enters 
reassures him as to the presence of Albertina. Mrs. 
Crichton is alone, and is sitting writing at her usual 
table in the bay-window — she is always a great scribe. 
The terror darts through his mind as he notes her 
occupation, that perhaps already, before he has had 
time to undeceive her, she has been sending her ver- 
sion of the facts out of this silent valley into the 
blatant world. The fear paralyzes his tongue, so 
that he can not bring out the ready prepared sen- 
tence which for hours he has been rehearsing, and 
with which he meant to have anticipated any speech 
of hers. 

At the sound of his name she just turns round 
in her chair, so as to face him without rising, and 
not holding out her hand, makes a grave inclination 
of the head. On her face is a serious but not angry 


202 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


concern ; nor upon her features does lie either read 
or suspect the surprised relief at his appearance 
which underlies the formality of her salutation. 

“ Y ou are come to make the explanation which 
I did not think you in a fit state to offer last night ? ” 
she begins, with quiet dignity, as soon as the servant 
has shut the door behind him. “ Perhaps I was un- 
just to you, and that I might have listened to what 
you had to say, in extenuation then, at once ; I am 
willing to admit this, and I also want to make it 
clear to you that it was only the unseemly time and 
manner of your declaration that I took any excep- 
tion to. As to the thing itself, there is nothing in 
the world that could give me greater — ” 

“Stop!” he says, coming close up to her, in 
frantic haste to hinder her from the humiliation 
that must be the consequence to her of finishing 
her sentence. “ As I told you last night — as I im- 
plored you to let me explain, but you would not al- 
low me — you are laboring under a most horrible 
and grotesque delusion ! ” 

She has laid her pen down on the inkstand, and 
now fixes him with the cold yet regretful severity 
of her eyes. 

“ Was it a delusion ? ” she asks in a low, incisive 
slow voice, “ that I saw my daughter lying in your 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


203 


arms, in overpowering emotion, and with disordered 
dress at two o’clock in the morning ? ” 

He put up both hands to his forehead, which 
feels bursting, with a gesture of desperation at the 
hideous falseness of his position. 

“ There was no delusion as to what you saw ! ” 
with a convulsive effort to speak with calm lucidity ; 
“ the delusion lay in your interpretation of it. How 
can I make you understand that I was no more re- 
sponsible for her situation — for her emotion — for 
her very presence, than — ” 

“Is it possible,” interrupts she with what to 
any chance observer of the scene must have appeared 
like a noble and righteous indignation lightly tinge- 
ing her refined, worn cheek, “ that you are trying 
to transfer the onus of blame from your own shoul- 
ders to those of your fellow-sinner ? Is it the old 
shabby story of ‘ the woman beguiled me ’ ? ” 

“ It is no question of blame ! ” cries he, wringing 
his hands in the impotent misery of seeing the utter 
incredulity with which his asseverations are re- 
ceived — “ how could you suppose that I could wish 
to blame the victim of such a devil-born and incon- 
ceivable error ? The God above us knows how 
little desire I have to speak harshly of her, if some 
terrible aberration of intellect has come upon her.” 


204 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


The faint color that had painted Mrs. Crichton’s 
face five minutes ago, lives in it now no more than 
in the sheet of writing paper before her. 

“ You are rich in shifts,” she says, speaking in 
a still softer key than before, being one of those 
women whose ire is low, not loud; “in order to 
escape the consequence of your own actions you 
now impugn her sanity! — well!” with a reflective air, 
“ I am not sure that you are not in the right. She 
must indeed have lost her senses, before she could 
have let herself be deceived by your empty show 
of devotion into such a headlong, lunatic passion ! ” 
Then leaning her elbow on the table and her 
head on her hand, she adds, as if to herself, “ It was 
so unlike her! Well ! ” again addressing him with 
a small and exceedingly bitter smile, “ when you 
send her to Bedlam, you will have to send me too ; 
for I labored under the same hallucination as she, 
and you must give me leave to tell you that you 
have done your best to maintain us in it ! ” 

Edward’s eyes rolled wildly round the room, as 
if to convince himself by the sight of familiar ob- 
jects that he was awake. Is it possible that in some 
sleep-walking state he may have committed the 
atrocities of which the pale woman before him is 
with so perfect an air of good faith and conviction 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


205 


accusing him ? A vague recollection of some tale 
once read of a man who in a somnambulist state 
had been guilty of crimes from which his waking 
self would have shrunk with horror, swims through 
his tormented brain. 

“We seem to be speaking two different lan- 
guages ! ” he says, with a great effort to keep hold 
of that sane reason which he feels escaping from 
him — “We do not grasp one another’s meaning. I 
do not understand to what you are alluding. What 
is my ‘ empty show of devotion ’ ? Wliat devotion 
have I ever shown ? ” 

“ What devotion time you ever shown f ” re- 
peats she, in an almost whisper of the profoundest, 
most astounded indignation. “ Is your memory so 
short that you have forgotten that not one day of 
last month has passed without your seeking to 
monopolize her society, or perhaps, as you would 
generously put it” — with low-voiced but bitter 
sarcasm — “ allowing her to monopolize yours '( ” 

“ My society ! ” echoes he, with a bewildered 
look, as his terrified memory flashes back over the 
period alluded to, bringing home^to him that un- 
broken series of, as he had thought, accidental and 
perfectly unimportant meetings, upon which Mrs. 
Crichton is now putting so wholly different a color. 


206 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


“ Is it possible ” — he stammers — “ that you can 
believe that in my wildest dreams I could ever have 
credited that she — that any one could have any other 
motive than sheer pity for enduring my wretched 
company ? ” 

There is such agony of naked truth in his whole 
tone and in his drawn face, that his auditor looks at 
him with an expression which, if he had known it, 
is not wholly devoid of the element of pity, which 
he had believed so predominant in her and her 
daughter’s feelings toward him. There is a more 
relenting accent in her next utterance. 

“ If you are not speaking truly, you are certainly 
the most consummate actor I ever came across. But 
nevertheless,” — with a heavy sigh, “ you must know 
that, whether wittingly or unwittingly, you have 
done Albertina an irreparable injury, that for your 
sake, and by you — yes, by you — she is hopelessly 
compromised ! ” 

He stares back at her with a look of vacu- 
ity, and repeats the word after her, as if he had 
never heard it before, in a dull, level key, “ Com- 
promised ! ” 

“ Irredeemably compromised ! ” pursues she with 
an intenser emphasis on the reiterated phrase — 
“ even you with your unbelievable ignorance or care- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


207 


lessness of the world’s opinion must understand 
that ! It is not as if I alone had witnessed the dis- 
graceful scene. You are as well aware as I, that the 
butler saw it too ! In an evil moment — oh, what an 
evil moment ! ” — bringing her two hands together 
in an access of acute distress — “ I had called him up, 
under the belief that burglars were breaking into 
the house ; oh ! what would any burglars have been 
in comparison ! ” She pauses as if choked ; and 
pouring some eau-de-Cologne out of a bottle near 
her on her handkerchief, passes it over her white 
lips. It seems to give her strength to go on. “You 
know what servants are ! You can hardly expect 
him to be silent ; hardly blame him if he does not 
keep so good a story to himself. In a day or two it 
will be all over the country, with embellishments, 
though indeed it does not need them! Yes” — 
bringing her worn eyes to bear on him with an 
expression of reproachful misery — “even you can 
not deny that you have, with all your innocence of 
ill-intention, hopelessly blackened her character and 
destroyed her future.” 

As she finishes this peroration, Mrs. Crichton 
steals a surreptitious glance at Mr. Lygon to ascer- 
tain by the manner in which he receives her 
allegation as to his having blackened Albertina’s 


208 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


character, whether he shows any consciousness 
of that labor having been spared him by a previous 
artist. Eut thanks to that ignorance of the world, 
its ways and its scandals, with which she had but 
lately twitted him, his face betrays no faintest 
suspicion that Albertina’s really rather colorful 
past has been tinged with any darker hue than that 
of fresh-fallen snow ! She therefore continues with 
heightened emphasis, and a better heart : — 

“ I am of course not in a position to know what 
has passed between you in your incessant tete-a-tetes, 
and she is in such a state of mind that I really am 
afraid to question her. But I think you will find it 
difficult to make any one believe — in the case of her 
own mother naturally impossible — that a well-con- 
ducted girl could throw herself into a man’s arms at 
two o’clock in the morning ‘ quite unprovoked ’ ! ” 
Again his eyes roll round haggardly, and his 
fingers move convulsively, as if trying to break 
through the meshes of the strong, invisible net, 
which he feels beginning to envelop body and soul. 
However earnestly he may reassert his innocence, 
his hearer will not believe him ; and yet, save by 
such reassertion, involving as it does so damning a 
charge of immodesty against this broken-hearted 
woman’s own child, what loophole for justification 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


209 


or escape is there for him ? Before his halting 
tongue has found any word to fit its need, Mrs. 
Crichton again speaks, speaks gently and plaintively, 
as if half to herself. 

“ Poor Albertina ! poor we ! If we could have 
looked on a few weeks, we should scarcely have been 
so overjoyed as we were at that first rivertide meet- 
ing, should not as the days went on have felt such 
deep thankfulness at being made, as we thought, the 
means by which you were being led back to happi- 
ness and love.” 

Mrs. Crichton is a clever woman, but her latest 
stroke is not that of a master. 

“ Love ! happiness ! ” he cries in a dreadful 
voice. “ Do you know what you are talking about ? 
Do you know that my wife has been dead only six 
months ? ” 

Memory is always playing us monkey-tricks, 
and at his words there darts into Mrs. Crichton’s a 
recollection of Albertina’s petulant execration of 
Anne, for having been so short a time removed 
from earth, an execration at which they had both 
laughed. Albertina’s mother could find it in her 
heart to echo it now, without any laughter. But 
she hastens to repair her blunder. 

“We let our hopes run away with us,” she says 
14 


210 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


with a smile whose profound melancholy is almost 
caressing in its gentleness. “Well, you must own 
that we have been sufficiently punished.” 

There is so entire an abandonment of the accusa- 
tory and bitter tone which had characterized her 
earlier utterances, such an apparently hopeless, quiet 
acquiescence in the ruin which he has undoubtedly, 
however unintentionally, brought upon her, that a 
new element of remorse is added to the sum of his 
immense woe. 

“It has all been a most lamentable mistake,” 
he says; “how it could ever have come about, 
I am absolutely powerless to understand ; but since 
it has — since you think me in some measure to 
blame for its having arisen — I wish, I wish earn- 
estly to do all — anything in my power to set it 
right.” 

She shakes her head with a sad, mild severity, 
“ Too late ! too late ! Can you ‘ call back yester- 
day out of the treasures of God * ? ” After an in- 
stant of reflection — “ There is one thing I would ask 
of you — which I think I have a right to exact — and 
that is, that you will not leave the neighborhood 
immediately ; that you will not make any abrupt or 
noticeable change in the manner of your intercourse 
with — this house — with — us ? ” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


211 


He gives a horror-stricken start, “I meant — I 
thought — I hoped to go to-night.” 

She shrugs her shoulders with a slight, despair- 
ing gesture. 

“ Very well, then, our fate is sealed. Your sud- 
den going will, of course, confirm the evil rumors, 
which, in a day or two, will be flying all over the 
place ; and which, if you had stayed and been seen 
to be still in the same relations of familiar friendli- 
ness with us as before, might possibly- — I do not 
think it is likely, in fact I think it very unlikely — 
but might possibly have died out. If you will ex- 
cuse me, I think I will go to Albertina.” 

But at the pronouncing of Miss Crichton’s 
Christian name, the door opens and she herself 
enters; enters with her hair no longer about her 
shoulders, but manoeuvred into all its usual silky 
bows and curls, — enters with ashy face and a 
whipped-hound air ; holding by the doorpost as she 


comes. 


CHAPTER XY. 


The Long is over, so much more than over, that 
the October term is half-way through. The cab- 
horses have recovered from the effects of those, to 
them, arduous two days, when, in scout and lodging- 
house parlance, “the gentlemen are coming up.” 
The gentlemen have returned to their autumn pas- 
times, and the hard-worked tutors to their accus- 
tomed treadmill. 

During the vacation, two or three notable mem- 
bers or ex-members of the University have passed 
away, and have had their achievements worthily 
commemorated in memorial sermons from two 
famous pulpits ; commemorated, these by the mag- 
nificent Dean in his cathedral, those by the great 
little “ Master ” in his thronged College Chapel. An 
obscurer member has been removed from it, but not 
by death, nor is any trumpet blown over his good 

deeds. The office of Bursar of College is 

rendered vacant by the retirement of Mr. Edward 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


213 


Lygon. He has withdrawn from it voluntarily, but 
if he had not done so, as Mrs. Pennington Bruce 
says, the public opinion of Oxford would have 
driven him to that step. 

The public opinion of Oxford is about as enlight- 
ened as that of any other groovy provincial society. 
But no one can deny that it was well within its 
rights when it bid its children cut Edward Lygon. 
There is not one among the most charitably-minded 
of his fellow-townsfolk who has not heard of, and 
expressed his or her disapprobation of his conduct. 
But there is one of his former acquaintances who is 
not an inhabitant, but only a fleeting passer through 
the town, who is as yet in ignorance of it. 

Miss Georgia Wrenn has come to bid good-by to 
Oxford, drawn by the magnet which causes so many 
to return to it, previous to her crossing the “ ocean,” 
as she calls it, to that gigantic Western Continent 
which to us small islanders seems too big to convey 
the idea of home. It is one of those goldenly pen- 
sive November days which seem to dress the gray 
city in more than its wonted beauty. Georgia ar- 
rived only this morning at the “ Mitre ” and is just 
on her way down Holywell, in order to get a last 
glimpse of the outside of her old lodgings, when, 
at the corner where the three ways to Holywell, 


214 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


Long Wall Street, and to the cemetery, diverge, she 
is nearly run into by a man who is walking along 
rapidly in the opposite direction to herself, wdth 
head so bent as to make collision wdth those he 
meets almost inevitable. It is only as he murmurs 
some apology that she recognizes him as Edward 
Lygon. 

“ Oh, it is you, is it ? ” she cries, with an accent 
of pleasure. “ If I had not run over you like this, 
I believe I should have flown straight in Penning- 
ton Bruce’s old face and marched right into 107 to 
tell you good-by.” 

Her hand is held out with the most candid 
friendliness, for does not the solid figure of Clint, in 
the background of her mind, enable her to defy 
misapprehension ? But no answering hand goes out 
to meet.it. 

“ You do not know to whom you are offering 
your hand,” he says, in a voice that she hardly 
recognizes ; a voice whose terrible strangeness chills 
away any rejoinder. “Are you aware that I am 
married ? ” he asks, in that awful voice, and lifting 
his bloodshot eyes to hers. She steps back involun- 
tarily a pace or two. 

“ Married ! ” 

“I was married this morning, in London.” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


215 


There is a horrible calm in the way he makes this 
announcement that freezes her blood, and it is a 
.second or two before she can put the trembling 
question, — 

“ To — to your cousin ? ” 

“ Yes, to my cousin.” 

He is still holding her with the despair in his 
hollow eyes ; and she, scarcely believing that she can 
be awake, repeats once more in a horrified tone, 
“Married!” Then as the recollection of the 
lovely dead woman, and of this man’s apparently 
deathless love and sorrow for her sweep across her 
mind, she adds, with a sort of little cry, “ Oh, poor 
Anne ! ” 

A slight convulsion passes over and twitches his 
sharp features. 

“She died last March,” he says stonily, “and I 
have left my bride, ha ! ha ! ” — with a ghastly 
laugh — “and come down alone to day to bid her 
good-by ; it would not be civil, would it, not to bid 
her good-by ? I am sure you would not detain me 
from her!” 

As he speaks he raises his hat, and turning, 
walks up to where the high elms have spilled all their 
yellow leaves above the cemetery-gate, and, having 
given all they had, lift their stripped arms, as if in 


216 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


resigned bereavement, to the mist-washed blue of 
the still heavens. 

Georgia stands looking after him cold and para- 
lyzed, like the good genius whose power over him 
is lost. Before she has ceased looking after him, he 
has reached the cemetery and is speeding along the 
road that leads to the chapel in its midst, that road 
bordered on either hand by tall Irish yews, that 
look so like cypresses as to deceive any but a very 
close look, and beneath which a row of flourishing 
fuchsia-bushes greenly droop. 

Most beautifully kept of burial-places is this 
Oxford one, with its sward fine and even as any 
garden’s, and its graves planted with well-tended 
plants. Even on this mid-November afternoon an 
old-established Gloire de Dijon rose-tree is holding 
up the light of a late tarrying blossom or two, as if 
to help one by it to decipher the faint-growing 
words of the stone text on the headstone that it lays 
its arms about. Tiny ivy-tendrils are stretching out 
their delicate fingers to veil a name or a lament, or 
a hope. White Latin crosses, and tall slender Saxon 
ones, copied probably from the century-worn orna- 
ment of some ancient market-place, stand side by 
side. A traveler’s-joy — word of good omen for 
those who have journeyed out of our sight — is 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


217 


flinging its fluffy tangles across a dead maiden’s 
name ; lime-trees join their leafless boughs above a 
departed parent, so long departed that his children 
have marked their dwindled grief by omitted 
flowers. A narrow bed, thickset with forget-me- 
nots, tells where an only son is resting, not alone, 
for his mother’s heart is buried with him. All 
these familiar objects fall on the retina of Edward’s 
eye, but he can not be said to see them, or indeed 
anything, until, crossing the grass by that tiny path 
which his feet in their bi-daily passage had worn and 
which is now nearly erased, he stands beside Anne’s 
grave. The rose-bushes, so carefully planted and 
pegged down in the spring, have during the summer 
made vigorous shoots, and now seem to fence round 
the dead woman, like that other enchanted hedge 
about the Sleeping Beauty, pushing him away with 
their angry hands as if no longer worthy to approach. 
He stands on the grass, looking through and over 
them at the name and date' so often read by his 
suffused eyes : “Anne Lygon. Born February 2d, 
1862. Died March 16th, 1889.” 

His eyes are dry enough now, as he stupidly 
mutters the words over to himself under his breath. 
After a while he passes round to the other side, and 
as he stares at his own name there comes rushing 


218 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


back upon him the recollection of how mad a long- 
ing used to fill him to tear out of the dumb future’s 
grasp the secret of the date that is to be some day 
cut on the now unscarred stone : — 

“ Edward Lygon. Born January 1st, 1861. 
Died 

The date was left blank by the cutter’s chisel 
because it was not then known. As soon as it is 
known it must surely be at once inscribed. And 
is it not now known ? Is it not as surely known 
as that Anne Lygon died on March 16th, that 
Edward Lygon has died this 15tli day of Novem 
ber ? 

“Edward Lygon. Born January 1st, 1861. 

Died November 15th, 1889.” 

For a moment he sees this new date standing out 
black and clear on the stone, as black and clear as 
the one that was cut there seven months ago. Then 
the phantom words die away from beside the real 
ones, and he knows they were only a trick played 
upon him by his aching eyes. But why should they 
be only phantom ones? Why should not they 
exist in solid reality, since they record a fact as cer- 
tain as that commemorated on the cross’s other side ? 
Why should not all the world know that Edward 
Lygon died on November 15th, 1889, so that they 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


219 


might not be misled into the belief that after that 
date any such person exists ? 

No sooner has the idea entered his head than it 
takes possession of his whole being. If the addi- 
tion to the inscription could but be made now, at 
once! A feeling of balked impatience and anger 
comes over him at having himself no fit instrument 
with which to begin upon the task that suddenly 
seems so imperative a one. The thought flashes 
across him with something that is almost like joy, 
that he has in his pocket a penknife with which he 
can at least scratch some semblance of the letters 
and numbers he desires to form, and which may 
be later replaced by fitter presentments of them, 
wrought by a more expert hand and a more suitable 
tool. 

A moment later he has stridden across the roses’ 
hostile arms outspread to keep him off, and is kneel- 
ing on the damp and heavy November earth by the 
prone cross’s side. He begins upon his task with a 
fevered ardor that drives all else out of his hot 
brain. The whole of his dreadfully whirling 
thoughts are concentrated upon the effort with his 
puny instrument to conquer the hardness of the op 
posing stone, but before he has made half a dozen 
strokes on the hopelessly resisting surface the blade 


220 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


snaps in two, and lie is left with the useless haft in 
his hand. 

With that snapping blade the blessed insensi- 
bility to all but the manual labor on which he had 
engaged seems to snap too; and a full conscious- 
ness of what he is, what he has lost, and what he 
has done, pours its awful light — a light as of the 
judgment-day — upon his appalled and naked soul. 
He staggers up off the clammy earth and falls all 
along upon the cross, stretching his arms out upon 
its arms, and burying his face, upon which drops of 
cold sweat are standing, on the penetrating chill of 
its surface. The cemetery as it happens is empty of 
visitors, so that no other and saner mourner is near 
to witness the reckless abandonment of his attitude. 

Beautiful as the day has been, yet being a No- 
vember one it necessarily has but short span of 
warmth and sunshine ; and already at Mr. Lygon’s 
entrance it had begun to droop, and the misty ex- 
halations to rise out of the damp ground. He does 
not feel them ; he does not even feel the ice of the 
rough granite against which his lips are pressed, and 
to which he is whispering, “ Anne ! Anne ! ” — • 
whispering w T ith ever greater and more anguished 
insistence, as one who is vainly trying to rouse a 
sleeper whose slumbers are unaccountably, terrify- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


221 


ingly deep. And the muffling darkness steals with 
quickened steps as the solemn chimes throw down 
the tale of each little gone quarter of an hour from 
their high belfries to both dead and living. 

A low, raw breeze has risen and is stirring in 
the stripped tree-tops of Magdalen Grove that over- 
looks the graveyard wall ; and the fog climbs and 
clings. He is wet to the skin with it, he of whose 
chill-taking aptitudes Anne has ever had such a 
tender dread, and his wavy hair is straight and 
dank. But he does not know it. He knows nothing 
save that never an answer comes to his pitiful 
calling, “Anne ! Anne ! Make room for me ! Why 
do not you answer me ? You always used to answer 
me ! Make room for me by you ! Anne ! Anne ! ” 

The cemetery gates have long been locked, and 
the departed shut in for the night from those whose 
brief tenancy of life and light still endures, when 
the sexton, who lives at the lodge, by the entrance, 
remembers that he has left his' spade and pick beside 
a grave dug in the forenoon, and, issuing out with a 
lantern, is startled to hear the sound of low calling 
and wailing proceeding from the direction of one of 
the monuments. Guided by his ear to the spot, he 
becomes aware of a dark figure stretched upon the 
horizontal cross — the only one in the place — which 


222 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


marks where rests the wife of the Bursar of 

College. His first impression is that some drunkard 
has strayed in, missing his way in the dark, and 
fallen asleep on the tomb, and this belief lends but 
little suavity to the tone in which he apostrophizes 
him: “Come, you, sir! Get up! Get out of 
this.” He shakes him roughly by the shoulder as 
he speaks, but even so he has to repeat his philippic 
twice before its object shows any consciousness of 
having heard it. Then at length he staggers dizzily 
to his feet, and the grave-digger, turning the light of 
his lantern full upon him, recognizes, with some- 
thing little short of stupefaction, the features of the 
Bursar of . 

“ I beg your pardon, sir, I am sure,” he stam- 
mers ; “I had not an idea it was you, sir ; I did 
not know as you was in the cemetery, sir. I did 
not know as you was back in Oxford, sir.” 

In civilized beings the instinct of self-respect, of 
keeping mind no less than body decently veiled 
from the public eye, survives almost all others, and 
it is with something like coherence that Edward, 
after staring wildly and whitely at the disturber of 
his vigil for a second, answers: “I — I — think I 
must have fallen asleep ! I am obliged to you for 
having awoke me.” 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


223 


As he speaks lie stoops and feels among the 
invisible thorns of the rose-bushes for his hat, and 
having found it and replaced it on his head, accom- 
panied by the sexton to the gate, which the latter 
unlocks for him, and to whom he bids an unsteady 
and mechanical good-night, he, without knowing or 
caring whither he is going, takes the direction of 
his former house. 

His feet have so often obeyed his brain in leading 
him there, that now they conduct him without its 
guidance to the familiar door. Having reached it, 
he feels mechanically in his pocket for his latch-key, 
but not finding it there — for, indeed, the little house 
has been unentered by him since he quitted it for 
Braithwaite more than three months ago — he stands 
staring irresolutely at the closed portal, apparently 
undecided whether to ring or not. As he so stands 
the door opens suddenly from the inside, and the 
figure of a woman huddled in a shawl appears in 
the aperture. 

“ Oh, you are here at last ! ” moans Albertina, in 
a voice of mingled fear and anger and bitterest re- 
proach ; “ I felt certain that you had come down 
here! I told mamma so. Oh, how could you 
leave me like that ? I knew that . you did not 
love me, but I did not think it was in you to in- 


224 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


suit me so grossly on the very day you had mar- 
ried me ! ” 

The door is open, and his feet having the long 
habit of entering through it, carry him inside. But 
having done so, they seem to be nigh failing him, 
for he reels and would fall, but that he catches at 
the wall and stands leaning against it as one drunk. 
Albertina has shut the door, and in the narrow pas- 
sage and all the close little house, smelling musty 
from being long uninhabited, there is no light save 
that of the one candle held in Albertina's hand, and 
throwing its glaring flicker on the wrathful, scared 
ghostliness of her face. 

“ Why do not you answer me ? ” she asks, the 
fear and ire of her tone growing with every word 
acuter. “ I knew that you had come here, so we 
followed you, mamma and I ; she has only just left 
me to send off a telegram. Of course, when we 
found that you had gone, we could not bear to face 
anybody. Oh, that I should have lived to endure 
such a bitter, bitter humiliation ! ” 

She breaks out into sobs, and covers her face 
with the one hand not occupied by the pewter 
candlestick ; but presently a terrified surprise at his 
total muteness under, her reproaches, and at the 
strangeness of his appearance, makes her pause 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


225 


in her tears and step a pace or two nearer to him, 
stretching out nervous lingers to touch his coat- 
sleeve. 

“ Why, you are wet ! dripping w*et ! ” she cries, 
not with the anxious tenderness of Anne, but with a 
shocked surprise ; “ and your clothes are covered 
w T itli mud ; what have you been doing to yourself ? 
How odd you look ! You had better come in here 
and sit down ! ” 

As she speaks she holds out her arm toward him 
as if offering him its support, but without seeming 
to see it, he staggers past her into the adjacent 
dining-room, and falls into, rather than sits down 
upon, his wonted chair at the table-foot. The table 
itself is spread with some comfortless cold food, and 
close to the master’s elbow there is placed a bottle 
of wdiisky, the only drink presumably producible 
by the old caretaker who has arranged the impro- 
vised banquet. He stretches out his hand, and, 
pouring some into a tumbler, 'tosses it off. Then he 
draws a long breath, and a sort of color comes into 
his face, and a species of light into his eyes. Alber- 
tina has sunk into the seat opposite Mr. Lygon, his 
late wife’s seat. 

“ You are faint from want of food, I suppose ! ” 

she says, her fear lessened by the discovery that he 
15 


226 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


can walk unassisted, and lier indignation proportion- 
ately deepened ; “ do you suppose I am not faint too ? 
I have not seen food since eight o’clock this morn- 
ing ; but much you care for that.” Again his hand 
goes out to the decanter, and again he pours and 
drinks. His eyes have hitherto not once rested on 
her, a circumstance which she had noted with sharp 
rage. But now suddenly he lifts and rests them on 
her ; rests them on her so long, that — filled as they 
are with dreadful light — she would give everything 
that she possesses in the world that he should turn 
them away. But still, still he looks at her. How 
clear the fiery spirit has made his brain ! How 
lucidly it has arranged his thoughts ! How it 
teaches him what he has to do ! 

“ What are you sitting in that chair for ? ” he 
asks very slowly, and in a voice so absolutely unlike 
his, that nothing but the evidence of her own eye- 
sight could persuade her of its having issued from 
him ; “ how dare you sit in that chair ? ” As he 
speaks he rises, as slowly as he had spoken, and still 
riveting on her that awful gaze, in which she now 
plainly recognizes the furious fire of insanity, he 
passes slowly around the table to her. 

Into the tiny time-space occupied by that little 
transit, what hours of unspeakable terror are crowd- 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


227 


ed for tlie wretched woman crouching paralyzed 
before him, watching his progress with a glassy 
stare ! lie has reached her, and his right hand is 
clutching her by the shoulder. In that supreme 
moment of extremest anguish she is powerless to 
attempt any futile resistance. She only whispers 
hoarsely, “ Are you going to kill me ? ” 

“ Get up ! ” he says, and as almost unconscious 
from terror she totters to her feet, he, still pain- 
fully gripping her by the shoulder, pushes her be- 
fore him through the little room, along the nar- 
row passage, now perfectly dark, to the street 
door. 

He fumbles for full twenty seconds before he 
can find the lock, still closely holding her, as if he 
feared she would escape him ; and into that horrible 
interval there is for her crowded a lifetime of such 
terror as is happily given to few to know during all 
their earthly span. 

What is he— what is this undoubted madman 
going to do with her? She is not long left in un- 
certainty. He has found the lock at last, and, draw- 
ing it back, flings the door wide, and at length re- 
leasing her from his grasp, thrusts her out with vio- 
lence into the muddy street, and flings the door to 
behind her. As the noise of its clamorous banging 


228 


A WIDOWER INDEED. 


reverberates through the house he bursts into an 
echoing peal of laughter. 


Three days later Edward Lygon dies, raving 
mad *, and at the end of the week, Anne — she must 
have heard him after all — makes room for him be- 
side her ! 

And a very good thing, too ! Mrs. Pennington 
Bruce says. 


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y -' HE NUGENTS OF CARRICONNA. An Irish 
J. Story. By Tighe Hopkins. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 


75 cents. 

“An extremely racy Irish story, quite separated from everything that savors of the 
present agitation in Ireland, and one of the best things of the kind for several years.” 
— Springfield Republican. 


/J SENSITIVE PLANT. A novel by E. and D. Ge- 
rard, joint authors of “ Reata,” “The Waters of Hercules,” 
etc. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 

“An agreeable and amusing love-story, the scene of which is part of the time in a 
coal-mining district in Scotland, and afterward in Venice, and a prominent character 
in which is a shrinking girl whose sensitiveness is suggestive of the little mimosa flower 
which gives title to the book.” — Cincinnati Times-Star. 



ON A LUZ. By Don Juan Valera. Translated by Mrs. 
Mary J. Serrano. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 


“A triumph of skillful execution as well as of profound conception of modern 
Spanish character and social life. It is full of the best traditions of Spanish thought, 
both sacred and secular, of Spanish proverbial wisdom, and of the humor of Cervantes 
and other lights of the past in the literature of Spain.” — Brooklyn Eagle. 


P 


EPITA XIMENEZ. By Don Juan Valera. Trans- 
lated by Mrs. Mary J. Serrano. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; 
cloth, $1.00. 


“A very striking and powerful novel.” — Boston Transcript. 

“ ‘One of the jewels of literary Spain’ is what a Spanish critic has pronounced the 
most popular book of recent years in that language, Don Juan Valera’s novel ‘ Pepita 
Ximenez.’ ” — The Nation. 


' rHE PRIMES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS. 
J- Ten Tales of Middle Georgia. By Richard Malcolm 
Johnston, author of “Widow Guthrie.” i2mo. Paper, 50 
cents ; cloth, $1.25. 

“ The best of Southern tales ” — Chicago Herald. 

“The thorough excellence of Col. Johnston’s work is well known. He was among 
the first of the successful short-story writers of this country. The steady increase in 
his fame is the best indication of the solid appreciation of the reading public. This 
public will give the new volume the same reception that made 4 Widow Guthrie ’ one of 
the most successful of recent novels.” — Baltimore American. 


New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


Recent Issues in Appletons’ Town and Country Library. 


T 


\ HE IRON GAME. 

“Trajan,’' “The Aliens,’ 
cloth, $1.00. 


By Henry F. Keenan, author of 
etc. 1 2 mo. Paper, 50 cents ; 


“An entertaining romance which covers the time from just before the war until soon 
after the peace. Six young people carry on their love-making under countless diffi- 
culties, owing to two of them being on the wrong side of the ‘ unpleasantness.’ Of 
course, there are all sorts of adventures, plots, misunderstandings, and wonderful 
escapes. . . . The book is written in excellent taste.” — Pittsburgh Bulletin. 


(UT0RIES 
^ Janvier. 


OF OLD NEW SPAIN By Thomas A. 
i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 


“The author does for the Mexicans much what Longfellow has done for the 
Acadians.” — Nezu York Commercial Advertiser. 

“ Mr. Janvier has evidently explored the ancient ruins and studied the old church 
records thoroughly, and has drawn therefrom much hitherto unused material.” — Cin- 
cinnati Times-Star. 

“Another lot of those tales of Mexico, which their author, Thomas A Janvier, 
knows how to write with such skill and charm. Nine of the stories are delightful, and 
line is the number of stories in the book.” — New York Sun. 


Y'HE MAID OF HONOR. By the Hon. Lewis Wing- 
'I field. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 


“ A story of France just before, during, and after the Reign of Terror. There are 
not many novels in our language which portray rural conditions in France in this 
troubled period, and this has a unique interest for that reason.” — Chicago Times. 

“ A very graphic story of those troublous times which witnessed the temporary 
triumphs of * the people.’ ” — Rochester Herald. 

“It may safely be said that up to the last page . . . the reader’s attention is not 
allowed to flag.” — London A thence uni. 


IN THE HEART OF THE STORM. By Max- 

J- well Grey, author of “ The Silence of Dean Maitland.” 

i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 

“ The plot is compact, deftly constructed, free from extravagances and violent im- 
probabilities, with a well-managed element of suspense running nearly to the end, and 
strongly illustrative throughout of English life and character. The book is likely to 
add materially to the author’s well-earned repute.” — Chicago Times. 


C onsequences. By egerton castle. i2mo. Paper, 

50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. • 

“ It is a real pleasure to welcome a new novelist who shows both promise and per- 
formance. . . . The work is distinguished by verve, by close and wide observation of 
the ways and cities of many men, by touches of a reflection which is neither shallow 
nor charged with the trappings and suits of weightiness ; and in many ways, not least 
in the striking end, it is decidedly original.” — Saturday Review. 


New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


A New Book by the author of “A Social Departure.” 



N AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON, . By Sara 
Jeannette Duncan. With 80 Illustrations by F. H. Town- 
send. i2mo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.50. 


A brilliant book, picturing English sights, society, customs, and amuse- 
ments, as seen by an unconventional and witty observer. The same quali- 
ties which made “A Social Departure” so remarkable a success will make 
“An American Girl in London ” a book which is “ talked about everywhere.” 

“In the lighter literature of last year there was nothing more amusing than ‘A 
Social Departure,’ by Sara Jeannette Duncan, of Canada. It was just long enough — 
it could not well have been longer — but each reader wished that the author might write 
another book in similar style. Well, she has done it, and she could not have taken a 
better subject than * An American Girl in London.’ ” — New York Herald. 

“ The raciness and breeziness which made ‘ A Social Departure,’ by the same au- 
thor, last season, the best-read and mosttalked-of book of travel for many a year, 
permeates the new book, and appears between the lines of every page. It is super- 
fluous to say that ‘An American Girl’ is ‘awfully fetching.’ "—Brooklyn Standard- 
Union. 



SOCIAL DEPARTURE : How Orthodocia and I 
Went Round the World by Ourselves. By Sara Jeannette 
Duncan. Illustrated by F. H. Townsend. i2mo. Paper, 75 
cents ; cloth, $1.75. 


“ It is a cheery, witty, decorous, charming book.” — New York Herald. 

“ Widely read and praised on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, the diary is 
now republished in New York, with scores of illustrations which fit the text exactly 
and show the mind of artist and writer in unison.” — New York Evening Post. 

“. . . It is to be doubted whether another book can be found so thoroughly amus- 
ing from beginning to end.” — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

“A very bright book on a very entertaining subject. We commend it to those 
readers who abhor the ordinary statistical book of travels.” — Boston Evening Tran- 
script. 

“A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed, difficult to 
find.” — St. Louis Republican. 

“For sparkling wit, irresistibly contagious fun, keen observation, absolutely poetic 
appreciation of natural beauty, and vivid descriptiveness, it has no recent rival.” — 
Mrs. P. T. Barnum’s Letter to the New York Tribune. 


New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


A NEW HUMOROUS TRAVEL-BOOK. 



WO GIRLS ON A BARGE. 

By V. Cecil Cotes. Illustrated by 
F. H. Townsend. i2mo. Cloth, 
$1.00. 


A bright, vivacious sketch of odd people 
and curious experiences, illustrated by the 
artist who illustrated “A Social Departure” 
and “ An American Girl in London,” both of 
which will be recalled by the good spirits of this equally unconventional 
record of a joui'ney down the Thames. 


AN ENGLISH WOMAN’S RECORD OF HER LIFE 

IN AFRICA. 

OME LIEE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. By 

Annie Martin. Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 

“Not in many days has a more interesting volume descriptive of life in a remote 
land been offered to the public. It is so brightly written, so cheery, so pervaded by 
the South African sunlight, as it were, that the reader regrets the rapidity with which 
he finds himself making his way through its charming pages.” — New York Times. 

“The first chatty book about permanent existence in South Africa. . . . The illus- 
trations are all from photographs of native animals and birds, principally the ostrich, 
in various stages of his homely existence. The style of the book is natural, unaffected, 
cheerful, and frequently approaches the humorous.” — New York Herald. 

“One of the most charming descriptions of African experience that have come 
under our notice. . . . The work does not contain a dull page. It is a sparkling little 
book, of which it would be difficult to speak too highly.” — London Atheneeum. 

“With fluent simplicity and feminine animation the author chats delightfully of the 
quaint daily happenings on her husband’s farm of twelve thousand acres in the Karroo 
district of Cape Colony. . . . The reader will peruse every page with keen enjoy- 
ment, and will feel grateful admiration for the clever, plucky, womanly woman who 
calls herself * Annie Martin.’ ” — New York Sun. 

“We commend the volume heartily to the attention of our readers, assuring them 
that it is impossible not to be charmed and interested in what it has to tell and what it 
tells so admirably.” — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette 

“The author’s style is gossipy, and she has a sense 
of humor that aids greatly in making her book readable. 

She seems to write without an effort, as if she enjoyed it; 
and before we have gone through the first chapter we 
become warm friends, so that when the final chapter 
arrives, we part with the authoress with sincere regret.” 

— Philadelphia Item. 

“A perfect book of its kind. . . . Mrs. Martin joins 
keen observing powers to a great love of nature, both 
animate and inanimate, and a rare descriptive faculty. 

Her pictures of the farm life, but, above all, of her dumb 
companions, are admirable. . . . The illustrations are 
excellent.” — New York Evening Post. 



OSTRICH CHICK. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


WORKS BY ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY (MRS. FISHER). 


FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 

J- trations. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. 


With 74 Ulus, 


“ Deserves to take a permanent place in the literature of youth.”— London Times . 
“ So interesting that, having once opened the book, we do not know how to leav< 
off reading.” — Saturday Review. 


T 


HROUGH MAGIC GLASSES and other Lectures. 

A Sequel to “ The Fairy-Land of Science.” Cloth, $1.50. 

CONTENTS. 


The Magician’s Chamber by Moon- 
light. 

Magic Glasses and How to Use Them. 
Fairy Rings and How They are Made. 
The Life-History of Lichens and 
Mosses. 

The History of a Lava-Stream. 


An Hour with the Sun. 

An Evening with the Stars. 

Little Beings from a Miniature 
Ocean. 

The Dartmoor Ponies. 

The Magician’s Dream of Ancient 
Days. 



IFE AND HER CHILDREN : 

mat Life from the Amoeba to the Insects. 
trations. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. 


Glimpses of Ani - 
With over 100 Illus- 


“ The work forms a charming introduction to the study of zoology — the science o! 
living things — which, we trust, will find its way into many hands.” — Nature. 


TJ TINNERS IN LIFE'S RACE ; or , The Great 

y y Backboned Family. With numerous Illustrations. Cloth, 
gilt, $1.50. 


“ We can conceive no better gift-book than this volume. Miss Buckley has spared 
no pains to incorporate in her book the latest results of scientific research. The illus- 
trations in the book deserve the highest praise— they are numerous, accurate, and 
striking.” — Spectator. 



SHORT HISTORY OF NATURAL SCI- 

ENCE ; and of the Progress of Discovery from the Time of 
the Greeks to the Present Time. New edition, revised and re- 
arranged. With 77 Illustrations. Cloth, $2.00. 


“ The work, though mainly intended for children and young persons, may be most 
advantageously read by many persons of riper age, and may serve to implant in their 
minds a fuller and clearer conception of * the promises, the achievements, and claims of 
science.’ ” — Journal of Science. 


New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 



ROUND AND ABOUT SOUTH AMERICA > 

Twenty Months of Quest and Query . By Frank Vincent, 
author of “ The Land of the White Elephant,” etc. With Maps, 
Plans, and 54 full-page Illustrations. 8vo, xxiv + 473 pages. 
Ornamental cloth, $5.00. 


No former traveler has made so comprehensive and thorough a tour of 
Spanish and Portuguese America as did Mr. Vincent. He visited every 
capital, chief city, and important seaport, made several expeditions into the 
interior of Brazil and the Argentine Republic, and ascended the Parand, 
Paraguay, Amazon, Orinoco, and Magdalena Rivers ; he visited the crater 
of Pichinchas, 16,000 feet above the sea-level ; he explored falls in the center 
of the continent, which, though meriting the title of “Niagara of South 
America,” are all but unknown to the outside world ; he spent months in 
the picturesque capital of Rio Janeiro ; he visited the coffee districts, studied 
the slaves, descended the gold-mines, viewed the greatest rapids of the globe, 
entered the isolated Guianas, and so on. 


/ 


N AND OUT OR CENTRAL AMERICA • and 

other Sketches and Studies of Travel . By Frank Vincent. 
With Maps and Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $2.00. 


B 


RAZLL : Its Condition and Prospects. By C. C. Andrews, 
ex-Consul-General to Brazil. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


“ I hope I may be able to present some facts in respect to the present situation of 
Brazil which will be both instructive and entertaining to general readers. My means 
of acquaintance with that empire are principally derived from a residence of three 
years at Rio de Janeiro, its capital, while employed in the service of the United States 
Government, during which period I made a few journeys into the interior .” — From 
the Preface. 


C HINA : Travels and Investigations in the “ Middle 

Kingdom . .” A Study of its Civilization and Possibilities. 

With a Glance at Japan. By James Harrison Wilson, late 
Major-General United States Volunteers and Brevet Major- 
General United States Army. i2mo. Cloth, $1.75. 

“The book presents China and Japan in all these aspects ; the manners and cus- 
toms of the people ; the institutions, tendencies, and social ideas ; the government and 
leading men .” — Boston Traveller. 


New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


GOOD BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS. 

JUST PUBLISHED. 

TTZE ALL. A story of out-door life and adventure 
Vr in Arkansas. By Octave Thanet. With 12 full-page Illus- 
trations by E. J. Austen and others. 

“ A story which every boy will read with unalloyed pleasure. . . . The adventures 
of the two cousins are full of exciting interest, particularly the account of the hog-hunt, 
which carries one breathlessly along by its moving, spirited, and truthful pictures, i he 
characters, both white and black, are sketched directly from nature, for the author is 
thoroughly familiar with the customs and habits of the different types of Southerners 
that she has so effectively reproduced ” —Boston Saturday Evening Gazette . 



ITTLE SMOKE. A story of the Sioux Indians. 
By William O. Stoddard. With 12 full-page Illustrations by 
F. S. Dellenbaugh, portraits of Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and 
other chiefs, and 72 head and tail pieces representing the 
various implements and surroundings of Indian life. 


Previously published in same Series. 

C ROWDED OUT O' CRO FIELD. By William 

O. Stoddard. The story of a country boy who fought his way 
to success in the great metropolis. With 23 Illustrations by 
C. T. Hill. 

“There are few writers who know how to meet the tastes and needs of boys better 
than does William O. Stoddard. This excellent story is interesting, thoroughly whole- 
some, and teaches boys to be men, not prigs or Indian hunters. If our boys would 
read more such books, and less of the blood-and-thunder order, it would be rare good 
fortune/’ — Detroit Free Press. 


TKING TOM AND THE R UNA WA YS. By Louis 

I Pendleton. The experiences of two boys in the forests of 
Georgia. With six Illustrations by E. W. Kemble. 

“The doings of ‘King’ Tom, Albert, and the happy-go-lucky boy Jim on the 
swamp-island, are as entertaining in their way as the old sagas embodied in Scandi- 
navian story.” — Philadelphia Ledger. 

HE LOG SCHOOL-HOUSE ON THE CO- 
LUMBIA. By Hezekiah Butterworth. With 13 full- 
page Illustrations by J. Carter Beard, E. J. Austen, and 
others. 

“ This book will charm all who turn its pages. There are few books of popular 
information concerning the pioneers of the great Northwest, and this one is worthy of 
sincere praise.” — Seattle Post- Intelligencer. 

The above are bound uniformly, in cloth, with special design in silver. 
8vo. $1.50 each. 


T 


New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


YOUNG HEROES OF OUR NAVY. 


JUST PUBLISHED. 


MIDSHIPMAN PA ULDING . A true story of the 
1 VJ. War of 1812. By Molly Elliot Seawell, author of “ Little 
Jarvis.” With Six full-page Illustrations by J. O. Davidson 
and George Wharton Edwards. 8vo. Bound in blue cloth, 
with special design in gold and colors. $i.co. 


“The book gives an excellent description of the battle of Lake Champlain, told in 
such interesting style, and so well blended with personal adventure, that every boy will 
delight to read it, and will unavoidably remember its main features.” — Springfield 
Union. 


“The story is told in a breezy, pleasant style that can not fail to capture the fancy 
of young readers, and imparts much historical knowledge at the same time, while the 
illustrations will help the understanding of the events described. It is an excellent 
book for boys, and even the girls will be interested in it.” — Brooklyn Standard-Union. 


NEIV EDITION. 



ITTLE JARVIS. The story of the heroic mid- 
shipman of the frigate “ Constellation.” By Molly Elliot 
Seawell. With Six full-page Illustrations by J. O. David- 
son and George Wharton Edwards. 8vo. Bound uni- 


formly with “ Midshipman Paulding.” $1.00. 


“Founded on a true incident in our naval history. . . . Sowell pictured as to 
bring both smiles and tears upon the faces that are bent over the volume. It is in ex- 
actly the spirit for a boy’s book.” — New York Home Journal. 

“ Little Jarvis was a manly, jolly little midshipman on board the good ship * Con- 
stellation,’ in the year 1800; so full of pranks that he spent most of "his time in the 
cross-trees and lived prepared for this inevitable fate, with a book in one pocket and a 
piece of hard-tack in the other. . . . His boyish ambition was to smell powder in a real 
battle, to meet and conquer a live French man-of-war. It would be unfair to the reader 
to tell how Little Jarvis conducted himself when at length the ‘ Constellation ’ grappled 
with the frigate ‘Vengeance’ in deadly combat.” — Providence Journal. 

“ The author makes the tale strongly and simply pathetic, and has given the world 
what will make it better.” — Hartfiord Courant. 


“Not since Dr. Edward Everett Hale’s classic, ‘The Man without a Country/ 
has there been published a more stirring lesson in patriotism.” — Boston Beacon. 

“ It is what a boy would call * a real boy’s book.’ ” — Charleston News and Courier. 

“ This is the story which received the prize of five hundred dollars offered by 
the Youth's Companion. It was worthy the distinction accorded it.” — Philadelphia 
Telegraph. 


“ It is well to multiply such books, that we may awaken in the youth that read 
them the spirit of devotion to duty of which Little Jarvis is a type. We shall some 
day have need of it all.” — Army and Navy Journal. 

“Any one in search of a thoroughly good book for boys need look no further, for 
this ranks among the very best.” — Milwaukee Sentinel. 


New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 



O TRAIGHT ON. A story of a 
vJ) boy’s school-life in France. By 
the author of “ The Story of Co- 
lette.” With eighty-six Illustra- 
tions by Edouard Zier. 320 pages. 
i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

Few books have appeared in recent years 
which appeal so strongly to the better senti- 
ments of young people as does “Straight 
On.” It is a deeply interesting novel of the 
experiences of a French officer’s son, who, 
being left an orphan at an early age, resided 
with relatives wffiile attending a military 
school for a term of years. The ups and 
downs of his life in the new home and at 
school, adopting his father’s last words — 
which give the book its title— for his watchword, make an absorbing narra- 
tive, culminating in an act of heroism which delights the reader while it clears 
up a mystery in which many cadets have been involved. The story is charm- 
ingly told and appropriately illustrated. 


ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF “COLETTE.” 
r JTHE STORY OF COLETTE. A new, large-paper 
edition. With thirty-six Illustrations. 8vo. Cloth, $1.50. 

The great popularity which this book has attained in its smaller form has 
led the publishers to issue an illustrated edition, with thirty-six original 
drawings by Jean Claude, both vignette and full-page. 

“ This is a capital translation of a charming novel. It is bright, witty, fresh, and 
humorous. ‘ The Story of Colette ’ is a fine example of what a French novel can be, 
and all should be.” — Charleston News and Courier. 

“To the fretful stay-at-home, to the tired mind, to the wearied attention of busy 
men when rest comes with the evening, and to the vexed and careful housewife, this 
bright tale will be received as a gift from the sky, full of pleasant images, quaint figures, 
and piquant thoughts.” — Chicago Tribune. 

“Colette is French and the story is French, and both are exceedingly pretty. The 
story is as pure and refreshing as the innocent yet sighing gayety of Colette’s life.” — 
Providence Journal. 

“ A charming little story, molded on the simplest lines, thoroughly pure, and ad- 
mirably constructed. It is told with a wonderful lightness and raciness. It is full of 
little skillful touches such as French literary art at its best knows so well how to pro- 
duce It is characterized by a knowledge of human nature and a mastery of style and 
method which indicate that it is the work rather of a master than of a novice. . . .Who- 
ever the author of ‘ Colette ’ may be, there can be no question that it is one of the pret- 
tiest, most artistic, and in every way charming stories that French fiction has been 
honored with for a long time.” — New York Tribune. 


New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


Good Books for Young Readers. 


JUST PUBLISHED. 

WE ALL. 

A story of out-door life and adventure in Arkansas. By Octave 
Thanet. With 12 full-page Illustrations by E. J. Austen and others. 
lC A story which every boy will read with unalloyed pleasure. . . . The adventures 
of the two cousins are full of exciting interest, particularly the account of the hog-hunt, 
which carries one breathlessly along by its moving, spirited, and truthful pictures. 
The characters, both white and black, are sketched directly from nature, for the 
author is thoroughly familiar with the customs and habits of the different types of 
Southerners that she has so effectively reproduced.” — Boston Saturday Evening 
Gazette. 

LITTLE SMOKE. 

A story of the Sioux Indians. By William O. Stoddard. With 12 
full-page Illustrations by F. S. Dellenbaugh, portraits of Sitting 
Bull, Red Cloud, and other chiefs, and 60 smaller pictures representing 
the various implements and surroundings of Indian life. 

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN SAME SERIES, 

CROWDED OUT O’ CROFIELD. 

By William O. Stoddard. The story of a country boy who fought 
his way to success in the great metropolis. With 23 Illustrations by 
C. T. Hill. 

“ There are few writers who know how to meet the tastes and needs of boys bet- 
ter than does William O. Stoddard. This excellent story is interesting, thoroughly 
wholesome, and teaches boys to be men, not prigs or Indian-hunters. If our boys 
would read more such books, and less of the blood-and-thunder order, it would be 
rare good fortune.” — Detroit Free Press. 

KING TOM AND THE RUNAWAYS. 

By Louis Pendleton. The experiences of two boys in the forests of 
Georgia. With 6 Illustrations by E. W. Kemble. 

“The doings of ‘King’ Tom, Albert, and the happy-go-lucky boy Jim on the 
swamp-island, are as entertaining in their way as the old sagas embodied in Scandi- 
navian story.” — Philadelphia Ledger. 

THE LOG SCHOOL-HOUSE ON THE COLUM- 
BIA. By Hezekiah Butterworth. With 13 full-page Illustra- 
tions by J. Canton Beard, E. J. Austen, and others. 

“ This book will charm all who turn its pages. There are few books of popular 
information concerning the pioneers of the great Northwest, and this one is worthy 
of sincere praise.” — Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 

The above are bound uniformly, in cloth, with special design in silver. 

8vo. $1.50 each. 


For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by mail on receipt price by the publishers , 

D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street, New York. 


Young Heroes of our Navy 


JUST PUBLISHED. 

MIDSHIPMAN PAULDING. 

A story of the War of 1812. By Molly Elliot Seawell, author < 
“Little Jarvis.” With Six full-page Illustrations by J. O. Davidso; 
and George Wharton Edwards. Bound uniformly with “Littl 
Jarvis.” $r.oo. 

“ The book gives an excellent description of the battle of Lake Champlain, tol 
in such interesting style, and so well blended with personal adventure, that ever 
boy will delight to read it, and will unavoidably remember its main features. 
Springfield Union. 

“The story is told in a breezy, pleasant style that can not fail to capture th 
fancy of young readers, and imparts much historical knowledge at the same timt 
while the illustrations will help the understanding of the events described. It is a 
excellent book for boys, and even the girls will be interested in it.” — Brookly 
Standard- Union. 

NEW EDITION. 

LITTLE JARVIS. 

The story of the heroic midshipman of the frigate 4 4 Constellation. 
By Molly Elliot Seawell. With Six full-page Illustrations by J 
O. Davidson and George Wharton Edwards. Bound in blu 
cloth, with special design in gold and colors. 8vo. $1.00. 

“ Founded on a true incident in our naval history. . . . Sowell pictured as t 
bring both smiles and tears upon the faces that are bent over the volume. It is i: 
exactly the spirit for a boy’s book. ” — New York Hotne Journal. 

“Little Jarvis was a manly, jolly little midshipman on board the good ship ‘ Cor 
stellation,’ in tii vear 1800; so full of pranks, that he spent most of his time in th 
cross-trees and lived prepared for this inevitable fate, with a book in one pocket an 
a piece of hard-tack in the other. . . . His boyish ambition was to smell powder in 
real battle, to meet and conquer a live French man-of-war. It would be unfair to th 
reader to tell how Little Jarvis conducted himself when at length the ‘ Constellation 
grappled with the frigate ‘ Vengeance ’ in deadly combat.”— Providence Journal. 

“ Those who have seen the majestic spectacle of this frigate under full sail wi! 
understand something of the glow with which the writer tells her tale. The littl 
rogue of a ‘ midshipmite,’ just turned thirteen years old, who proves a hero whe: 
occasion arises, is sure to prove a popular hero.” — Philadelphia Ledger. 

“The author makes the tale strongly and simply pathetic, and has given th 
world what will make it better.” — Hartford Courant. 

“ Any one in search of a thoroughly good book for boys need look no furthea 
for this ranks among the very best.”— Milwaukee Sentinel. 

— 

For sale by all booksellers , or wMl be sent by mail on receipt of price by the pullishers s 

D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street, New York. 













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